[Chapter XXIV] Richard Jones

1. Reverend Richard Jones, “An Essay on the
Distribution of Wealth, and on the Sources of
Taxation,” London, 1831, Part I, Rent [Elements of a
Historical Interpretation of Rent. Jones’s Superiority over
Ricardo in particular Questions of the Theory of Rent and
His Mistakes in This Field]

Even this first work on rent is distinguished by
what has been lacking in all English economists since Sir
James Steuart, namely, a sense of the historical
differences in modes of production. (Such a correct
distinction of historical forms generally speaking is not
contradicted by the very important archaeological,
philological and historical blunders attributed to
Jones. See, for example, The Edinburgh Review,
Vol. LIV, Article IV.

He found that the modern economists after Ricardo define
rent as surplus profit, a definition which
presupposes that the farmer is a capitalist (or a farming
capitalist who exploits the land), who expects average
profit on the capital which he invests in this particular
sphere, and that agriculture itself has been subordinated to
the capitalist mode of production. In short, landed
property is conceived only in its modern bourgeois form,
that is, in the modified form which it has been given by
capital, the dominant relation of production in
society. Jones by no means shares the illusion that
capital has been in existence since the beginning of the
world.

His views on the origin of rent in general are summarised
in the following passages:

“The power of the earth to yield,
even to the rudest labours of mankind, more than is
necessary for the subsistence of the cultivator himself,
enables him to pay […] a tribute: hence the origin of
rent” ([Richard Jones, An Essay on the Distribution
of Wealth,] p. 4).

“… rent has usually originated
in the appropriation of the soil, at a time when the
bulk of the people must cultivate it on such terms as they
can obtain, or starve; and when their scanty capital of
implements, seeds, etc., being utterly insufficient to
secure their maintenance in any other occupation than that
of agriculture, is chained with themselves to the land by an
overpowering necessity” (op. cit., p. 11).

Jones traces rent throughout all its changes, from its
crudest form, performance of labour services, to modern
farmer’s rent. He finds that everywhere a specific
form of rent, i.e., of landed property, corresponds to a
definite form of labour and of the conditions of
labour. Thus, labour rents or serf rents, the change
from labour rent to produce rent, metayer rents, ryot rents,
etc., are examined in turn, a development the details of
which do not concern us here. In all previous forms,
it is the landed proprietor, not the capitalist, who
directly appropriates the surplus labour of other
people. Rent (as the Physiocrats conceive it by
reminiscence [of feudal conditions]) appears
historically (and still on the largest scale among the
Asiatic peoples) as the general form of surplus
labour, of labour performed without payment in
return. The appropriation of this surplus labour is
here not mediated by exchange, as is the case in capitalist
society, but its basis is the forcible domination of one
section of society over the other. (There is,
accordingly, direct slavery, serfdom or political
dependence.)

Since we are only considering landed property here
insofar as an understanding of it contributes to an
understanding of capital, we shall leave Jones’s analysis
and proceed directly to his result—which distinguishes
him from, and shows his superiority over, all his
predecessors.

But first a few incidental remarks.

In discussing forced labour and the forms of
serfdom (or slavery) which correspond to it more or less
||1122| , Jones
unconsciously emphasises the two forms to which all
surplus-value (surplus labour) can be reduced. It is
characteristic that, in general, real forced labour
displays in the most brutal form, most clearly the
essential features of wage-labour.

Under these conditions <where there is serf
labour> rent can only be increased either by the
more skilful and effective utilisation of the labour of the
tenantry <relative surplus labour>, this however
is hampered by the inability of the proprietors to advance
the science of agriculture, or by an increase in the total
quantity of the labour exacted, and in this case,
while the lands of the proprietors will be better tilled,
those of the serfs, from which labour has been withdrawn,
all the Worse.[a] (Op.
cit., Chapter II.)

What distinguishes this book on rent by Jones from
his Syllabus to be mentioned in section
2—is this: in the first work
he proceeds from the various forms of landed property as
a given fact; in the second, from the Various forms of
labour to which they correspond.

Jones also shows how different stages in the development
of the productive power of social labour correspond to these
different production relations.

Serf-labour (just as slave-labour) has this in common
with wage-labour, in respect of rent, that the latter is
paid in labour not in products, still less in
money.

As far as metayer rent is concerned “…
the advance of stock by the proprietor, and the
abandonment of the management of cultivation to
the actual laborers, indicate[b] the continued absence of an
intermediate class of capitalists…” (op. cit.,
p. 74).

“Ryot rents are […] produce
rents paid by a laborer, raising his own wages from the
soil, to the sovereign as its proprietor”
(op. cit., Chapter IV, [p. 109]). (In Asia especially)
“… Ryot rents […] are sometimes mixed up
with […] labor rents and metayer rents” (p.
136 et seq.). [Under this system] the sovereign is the
chief landlord. “… the prosperity, or
rather the existence, of the towns of Asia, proceeds
from[c] the local
expenditure of the government”
(p. 138).

“Under cottier rents we may
include all rents contracted to be paid in money, by
peasant tenants, extracting their own maintenance from the
soil” (p. 143). (Ireland.) Over the
greater part of the globe, no money rents are paid[d] [loc. cit.].

“All the forms”[e] (serf, ryot, metayer, cottier, etc.,
in short, peasant rents) prevent “the full development
of the productive powers of the earth” [p. 157].

“… the difference which
exists in the productiveness of the industry”
[depends] “first, on the quantity of
contrivance used in applying manual labour: secondly,
on the extent to which the mere physical exertions
[…] are assisted by the accumulated results of
past labour: in other words, on the different quantities
of skill, knowledge, and capital, brought to the task of
production….” [pp. 157-58].

“Small Numbers of the
Non-Agricultural Classes. It is obvious, that the
relative numbers of those persons who can be maintained
without agricultural labor, must be measured wholly by
the productive powers of the cultivators” (Chapter
VI [pp. 159-60]).

“In England, the tenants who on the
disuse of the labor of the serf tenantry, took charge of the
cultivation of the domains of the proprietors, were found on
the land; they were yeomen”
(op. cit. [p. 166]).

We now come finally to the point which is of decisive
interest to us here—farmers’ rents. It is
here that Jones’s superiority
is most striking, for he shows that what Ricardo and
others regard as the eternal form of landed property, is its
bourgeois form, which, after all, only develops, firstly,
when landed property has ceased to be the dominant relation
in production and, consequently, in society; secondly, when
agriculture itself is carried on in a capitalist way, which
presupposes the development of large-scale industry (at
least of manufacture) in the towns. Jones shows that
rent in the Ricardian sense only exists in a ||1123| society the basis of which is
the capitalist mode of production. As a consequence of
the transformation of rent into surplus profit, the
direct influence of landed property on wages ceases,
which, in other words, merely means that the landed
proprietor ceases to be the direct appropriator of
surplus labour, this role being now assumed by the
capitalist. The relative size of the rent affects only
the division of surplus-value between capitalist and
proprietor, not the exaction of that surplus labour
itself. This conclusion in fact emerges from Jones’s
analysis, though it is not explicitly stated.

Jones marks a substantial advance on Ricardo, in his
historical explanation as well as in the economic
details. We shall follow his theory step by
step. Blunders, of course, occur.

In the following passages, Jones correctly explains the
historical and economic conditions under which rent is
equivalent to surplus profit, that is the expression of
modern landed property.

“Farmers’ Rents […] can
only exist when the most important relations of
the different classes of society have ceased to originate
in the ownership and occupation of the soil” (op.
cit., p. 185).

The capitalist mode of production begins with manufacture
and only later subjugates agriculture.

“… it is the artizans and the
handicraftsmen who first range themselves under the
management of capitalists…”
(p. 187).

“One of the immediate consequences of
this change[f] is the
power of moving at pleasure the labor and capital
employed in agriculture, to other occupations.”

<And only with this power can there be any question
of equalisation of agricultural and industrial
profit.>

“While the tenant was himself a
laboring peasant, forced, in the absence of other funds for
his maintenance, to extract it himself from the soil, he was
chained to that soil by necessity; […] the little
stock he might possess, since it was not sufficient to
procure him a maintenance unless used for the
single purposes of cultivation, was virtually chained to
the soil with its master.” [With the capitalist
master] “this dependance on the soil is broken: and
unless as much can be gained by employing the working
class on the land, as from their exertions in various other
employments, which in such a state of society abound,
the business of cultivation will be abandoned. Rent,
in such a case, necessarily consists merely of surplus
profits…” (loc. cit., p. 188). Rent
ceases to have any influence on wages. “When the
engagement of the laborer is with a capitalist, this
dependance on the landlord is
dissolved…” (p. 189).

As we shall see later, Jones does not really explain how
surplus profit arises, or rather, he explains it only
in Ricardian fashion, i.e., by the difference in the degrees
of natural fertility of different soils.

“When rents consist of
surplus profits, there are three causes from which the
rent of a particular spot of ground may increase:

“First, an increase of the produce
from the accumulation of larger quantities of capital in its
cultivation;

“Secondly, the more efficient
application of capital already employed;

“Thirdly, (the capital and produce
remaining the same) the diminution of the share of the
producing classes in that produce, and a corresponding
increase of the share of the landlord.

“These causes may combine in
different proportions…” (p. 189).

We shall see what is involved by these different
causes. First of all they all presuppose that rent
consists of surplus profit; and then there is not the
slightest doubt that the first cause to which Ricardo
alludes only once and then only incidentally, is
correct. When the capital employed in agriculture
increases, the amount of rent increases as well, even though
the price of corn, etc., does not rise and no other
change whatever takes place. It is clear that, in this
case, the price of land rises, although corn prices
do not and no change whatever takes place in them.

Jones declares rent on the worst soil to be
monopoly price. He therefore restricts the real
source of rent either to monopoly price (in the same
way as Buchanan, Sismondi, Hopkins, and others) if it is
absolute rent (not arising from differences in the
fertility of the different kinds of soil) or to
differential rent (in the Ricardian sense).

<As regards absolute rent, let us take a
gold mine. We assume that the capital employed
is £100, the average profit £10, rent £10,
and that half the capital consists of constant capital (in
this case, machinery and auxiliary materials) and half of
variable capital. The £50 of constant capital
means nothing more than that it contains the same amount of
labour-time as ||1124|is embodied in £50 worth of gold. That part
of the product which is worth £50 therefore replaces
this constant capital. If the rest of the product is
worth £70 and if 50 workers are set to work with the
£50 of variable capital (assuming a working-day of 12
hours), then the labour of these 50 workers must be
expressed in £70 worth of gold, of which £50
goes to pay wages and £20 represents unpaid
labour. The value of the products of all capitals of
the same composition will then be 120; the product will then
consist of 50c and 70, [the 70] corresponding to 50
working-days, that is, 50v plus 20s. A capital of 100,
utilising more constant capital and a smaller number of
workers, would produce a product of less value.
However, all ordinary industrial capitals, although the
value of their products would, in these circumstances,
amount to 120, would only sell them at their production
price of 110. But in the case of the gold mine, this
is impossible quite apart from the ownership of land,
because in this case the value is expressed in the product
in kind. A rent of £10 would therefore of
necessity arise.>

“Corn may he selling […] at a
monopoly price, that is, at a price which more than
pays the costs and profits of those who grow it under the
least favourable circumstances; or at such a price as
will only repay their[g]common profits.” In the
first case “abstracting from all difference of
fertility in the soils cultivated”, (the)
“increased produce obtained by increased
capital (prices remaining the same) may increase the
rents, in proportion to the increased capital laid
out.” “Let[h] 10 per cent be the ordinary rate of
profit. If the corn produced […] by £100
sold for £115, the rent would be £5. If in
the progress of improvement the capital employed on the same
land were doubled, and the produce doubled, then £200
would yield £230 and […] £10 would be
rent and the rent will be doubled” (op. cit.,
p. 191).

<This applies to absolute rent as well as to
differential rent.>

“In small communities corn may be
constantly at a monopoly price… In
larger countries too […] corn may […] he at a
monopoly price,[i]
provided the increase of population keeps steadily ahead of
the increase of tillage [… ] however […]
monopoly price of corn is […] unusual in countries of
considerable extent and great variety of soil. In such
countries, if the produce of the soils in cultivation sells
for more than will realise the usual rate of profit on the
capital employed, other[j] lands are cultivated; or more capital laid out on
the old bands, till the cultivator finds he can barely get
the ordinary profit on his outlay. Then […]
tillage will stop, and in such countries
[…] corn is usually sold at a price not more
than sufficient to replace the capital employed under the
least favorable circumstances, and the ordinary rate of
profit on it: and the rent paid on the better soils is then
measured by the excess of their produce over that of the
poorest soil cultivated by similar capitals”
(loc. cit., pp. 191-92).

“All […] that is necessary to
effect a rise of rents over the surface of a country
possessing soils of unequal goodness, is this: that the
better soils should yield to the additional capital employed
upon them in the progress of cultivation, something more
than the soils confessedly inferior to them; for then while
the means can be found of employing fresh capital on any
soil between the extremes A and Z, at the ordinary rate of
profit, rents will rise on all the soils superior to that
particular soil” (p. 195).

“Let A have been […]
cultivated with £100 yielding annually £110,
£10 being the ordinary profits […] and B with
£100 yielding £115: and C with £100
yielding £120: and so on to Z [… ] the
rent of B would be £5, and that of C £10
[… ] each of these qualities of soil be
cultivated with a capital of £200 […] A will
produce £220, B £230, C £240…
The rent of B, therefore, will have become £10, that
of C £20” (p. 193).

“… the general
accumulation of the capital employed in cultivation,
while it augments the produce of all gradations of soil,
somewhat in proportion to their original goodness, must
of itself raise rents; without reference to any progressive
diminution in the return to the labor and capital
employed, and, indeed, quite independently of any
other cause whatever” (p. 195).

It is one of Jones’s merits, that he is the first who
clearly brings out the fact that once rent has come into
being, its growth will on the whole <provided no
revolution in the mode of production takes place>
result from the increase of agricultural capital, that is,
of capital employed on land. This may be the case not
only if prices remain the same but even when they
fall below their former level.

“The average corn produce of England
at one time did not exceed 12 bushels per acre; it is now
about double” (p. 199).

“… every successive portion of
capital and labor concentrated on the land, may be more
economically and efficiently applied than the last”
(pp. 199-200).

Rent will double, triple and quadruple, and so on, if the
capital invested in the old band is doubled, tripled,
quadrupled,[k]
“without a diminished return, and without altering the
relative fertility of the soils cultivated”
p. 204).

This is therefore the first point on which Jones is in
advance of Ricardo. Once rent exists, it may increase
as a result of the mere increase in the amount of capital
employed on the land, irrespective of
any change either in the relative fertility of the soils, or
in the returns yielded by the successive doses of capital
employed, or any alteration whatever in the price of
agricultural produce.

Jones’s next point is this:

“… it is not essential to the
rise that the proportion between the fertility of the
soils should be exactly stationary”
(p. 205).

<Here Jones overlooks the fact that conversely, an
increasing disparity, even when the whole
agricultural capital is more productively employed, must and
will increase the amount of the differential rent. On
the other hand, a diminution in the differences of
the fertility of the various soils must diminish
differential rent, i.e., rent arising from those
differences. By taking away the cause you take
away the effect. Nevertheless, rent (apart from
absolute rent) may increase, but in that case only in
consequence of an in crease of the agricultural capital
employed.>

(This means nothing more than that the employment of
additional capital adds to the differences of relative
fertility, and, in that way, to differential rent.)

“If […] numbers, bearing a
certain proportion to each other, are multiplied by the same
number […] the proportion […] will be the same
as those of the original numbers; yet the difference
between[l]the
amounts of the several products, will increase at each
step of the process. If 10, 15, 20, be multiplied by 2
or 4, and become 20, 30, 40, or 40, 60, 80, their relative
proportions will not be disturbed: 80 and 60 bear the same
proportion to 40, as 20 and 15 to 10: but the differences
between the amounts of their products will have
increased at each operation, and from being 5 and 10, become
10 and 20, and then 20 and 40” (pp. 206-07).

This law works out simply as follows:

5

10

1.

10,

15,

20.

The difference

5 [and 10].

Sum of the differences

15.

10

20

2.

20,

30,

40.

" "

10 [and 20].

" "

30.

20

40

3.

40,

60,

80.

" "

20 [and 40].

" "

60.

[40]

[80]

4.

80,

120,

160.

[" "

40 and 80.

" "

120.]

The difference between the terms is doubled in 2 and
quadrupled in 3. The sum of the differences is likewise
doubled in 2 and quadrupled in 3.

The first law (applied by Jones only to
differential rent) is that the amount of rent increases with
the increase of the amount of capital employed. If
rent is 5 for 100, then it is 10 for 200.

||1126| The second
law. All other circumstances remaining the same,
and the proportional difference between the capitals
employed on different soils remaining the same, the
amount of that difference, and hence the amount of
the aggregate rent or the sum of those differences
increases, as the absolute quantity of that
difference—resulting from the increase of the capitals
employed—increases. Hence the second law
is: the amount of differential rent increases in proportion
as the differences of the products increase when the
relative fertility remains the same, but capital employed on
the different soils is increased uniformly.

Further: “If £100 be employed on classes A, B
and C, with a produce of £110, £115, £120,
and subsequently £200, with returns of £220,
£228 and £235, the relative differences of the
products will have diminished, and the soils will have
approximated in fertility; still the difference of
the amounts of their products will be increased from
£5 and £10 to £8 and £15, and rents
will have risen accordingly. Improvements, therefore,
which tend to approximate the degrees of fertility of the
cultivated soils, may very well raise rents, and that
without the co-operation of any other cause”
(loc. cit., p.208).

“The turnip and sheep husbandry, and
the fresh capital employed to carry it on, produced a
greater alteration in the fertility of the poor soils than
in that of the better; still it increased the absolute
produce of each, and, therefore, it raised rents, while
it diminished the differences in the fertility of the soils
cultivated” (loc. cit.).

With regard to Ricardo’s view that improvements may cause
rents to fall , “it is only necessary to remember the
slowly progressive manner in which agricultural improvements
are practically discovered, completed, and
spread…” (p. 211).

<This last passage is only of practical interest and
does not affect the problem as such, but refers only to the
fact that improvements do not proceed so rapidly as to
considerably augment supply in regard to demand and thus to
reduce market prices.>

Originally we have:

a

b

c

1.

10

15

20

The capital employed in each class amounts to 100; the
product to 110, 115, 120. The difference
amounts to 5+10=15.

As a result of improvements made, twice as much capital
is employed, that is, [£]200
instead of [£]100 in each of the classes a, b and
c. But the capital has a different effect in the
different classes and the products yielded are 220 (that is,
double that of a), 228 and 235. Thus:

a

b

c

2.

20

28

35

£200 capital is employed in each class. The
products amount to [£]220, [£] 228 and
[£]235. The difference amounts to
[£] 8+ [£]15=[£]23. But the rate of
difference has been reduced. 5:10 (i.e., [the ratio of
the differences] b-a [to a] in the first
case)=1/2 and 10:10=1, whereas 8:20 is
only 8/20 or 2/5
and 15:20= 15/20 or
3/4. The rate of difference has
declined but its amount has increased. This does not,
however, constitute a new law, but only shows that the
increase of capital employed leads to an increase in rent as
in the first law, although the increase in a, b and c is not
proportional to their original differences of
fertility. If prices were to fall as a consequence of
this increased fertility (which is however [relatively]
diminished fertility for b and c, for otherwise their
product would have to be 230 and 240 respectively), it would
by no means be necessary for the rent to rise or even to
remain stationary.

||1127| As a consequence, a
sequel, of the second law, a further application of it can
be considered:

The third law—if “improvements in the
efficiency of the capital employed in cultivation”
increase the surplus profits realised on particular
spots of land, they increase rent.

The following passages (together with the earlier ones)
refer to this.

“…the[m] first source […] of a rise
of farmers’ rents, namely,[n] the progressive
accumulation and unequal effects of capital on all
gradations of soils” (p. 234).

<This, however, can only refer to improvements which
relate directly to the fertility of the soil as, for
instance, manures, rotation of crops, etc.>

“Improvements […] in the
efficiency of the capital employed in cultivation, raise
rents by increasing the surplus profits realised on
particular spots of land. They invariably produce
this increase of surplus profits, unless they augment the
moss of raw produce so rapidly as to outstrip the progress
of demand […] Such improvements in the efficiency
of the capital
employed, do usually occur in the progress of
agricultural skill, and of the accumulation of greater
masses of auxiliary capital” (constant
capital). “A rise of rents from this cause, is
generally followed by the spread of tillage to inferior
soils, without any diminution[o] in the returns to agricultural
capital on the worst spots reclaimed” (p. 244).

<Jones very correctly declares that a fall in
profits does not prove decreasing efficiency of
agricultural industry. But he himself explains most
inadequately how such a fall can come about.
[According to him] either the amount produced or its
division between labourers and capitalists may change.
Jones has as yet not the faintest notion of the real law of
declining rate of profit.

“A fall of Profits is no Proof of the
decreasing Efficiency of agricultural Industry”
(p. 257).

“… profits depend partly on
the amount of the produce of labor, partly on the
division of that produce between the laborers and
capitalists; and […] their amount, therefore, might
vary from a change in either of these particulars”
(p. 260).

This is the reason for the incorrect law which he
elaborates:

“When, abstracting from the effects
of taxation, an apparent diminution takes place in the
revenues of the producing classes considered jointly”
(what revenue means is not explained here, [whether ] value
in use or value in exchange, amount of profit or rate [of
profit]), “when there is a fall in the rote of
profits, not compensated by a rise of wages, or a fall
of wages not compensated by a rise in the rate of
profits”,[p]
(that is precisely what Ricardo’s law says, and it is wrong)
“there has been, it may be argued, some decrease in
the productive power of labor and capital”… (p.
273).>

Jones correctly grasps that a relative increase
[in the value] of agricultural produce as compared to [that
of] industrial produce may take place in the progress of
society although in point of fact, agriculture is
progressing absolutely.

“In the progress of nations, an
increase of manufacturing power and skill usually occurs,
greater than that which can be expected in the
agriculture of an increasing people. This is an
unquestionable […] truth. A rise in the
relative value of raw produce may, therefore, be
expected in the advance of nations, and this from a cause
quite distinct from[q]any positive decrease in the
efficiency of agriculture” (p. 265).

But this does not explain the positive rise in the
money pricesof raw produce,
unless a fall in the value of gold takes place which in
manufacture is balanced and more than balanced by a still
greater fall in the [value of] commodities produced, while
in agriculture it is not balanced in this way. This
may happen, even ||1128| if no
general fall in the value of gold (money) takes place, but
when a particular nation, for instance, buys more money with
a day’s work than the competing nations do.

Jones explains his reasons for not believing that in
England the Ricardian law operates, the abstract possibility
of which he does admit however.

“If rents […] should ever rise
from that cause alone, which has been so confidently stated
by Mr. Ricardo […] ‘the employment of an
additional quantity of labor with a proportionally less
return’, and a consequent transfer to the landlords of
a part of the produce […] obtained on the better
soils; then the average proportion of the gross
produce taken by the landlords as rent, will necessarily
increase.” Secondly, “the industry of a larger
proportion of the population must be devoted to
agriculture” (pp. 280 and 281).

(This last statement is not quite correct. It is
possible that a greater portion of indirect labour is
employed—i.e., more commodities provided by industry
and commerce enter the agricultural process, without
increasing the gross product proportionally, and without the
employment of more immediate labour. There may be even
less employed.)

“The statistical history of England
presents to us […] three facts […] a spread of
tillage accompanied by a rise in the general rental of the
country […] a diminution of the proportion of people
employed in agriculture […] a decrease in the
landlord’s proportion of the produce” (p. 282).

(This last development, just as the decline in the rate
of profit, is due to the increase in that part of the
product which replaces constant capital. At the same
time, rent can increase in both amount and value.)

“Adam Smith […] goes on to say
[…] ‘In the progress of improvement, rent,
though it increases in proportion to the extent, diminishes
in proportion to the produce of the land’”
(p. 284).

Jones calls constant capital “auxiliary
capital”.

“It appears from various returns made
at different times to the Board of Agriculture, that the
whole capital agriculturally employed in England, is to that
applied to the support of labourers, as 5 to 1; that is,
there are four times as much auxiliary capital used, as
there is of capital applied to the maintenance of the labor
used directly in tillage. In France, […] more
than twice” (p. 223).

“… when a given quantity of
additional capital is applied in the shape of the results
of past labor, to assist the laborers actually employed,
a less
annual return will suffice to make the employment
of such capital profitable, and, therefore, permanently
practicable, than if the same quantity of fresh capital were
expended in the support of additional
laborers…” (p. 224).

“Let us suppose £100 employed
upon the soil[r] in
the maintenance of three men, producing their own wages, and
10 per cent profit on them, or £110. Let the
capital employed […] be doubled. And first let
the fresh capital support three additional laborers.
In that case, the increased produce must consist of the full
amount of their wages, and the ordinary rate of profit on
them. It must consist, therefore, of the whole
£100, and the profit on it; or of £110.
Next let the same additional capital of £100 be
applied in the shape of implements, manures, or any results
of past labor, while the number of actual laborers remains
the same […] this auxiliary capital to last on the
average for five years: the annual return to repay the
capitalist must now consist of £10 his profit, and of
£20 the annual wear and tear of his capital: or
£30 will be the annual return, necessary to make the
continuous employment of the second £100 profitable,
instead of £110, the amount necessary when direct
labor was employed by it. It will be obvious,
therefore, that the accumulation of auxiliary capital in
cultivation, will be practicable when the employment of the
same amount of capital in the support of additional labor
has ceased to he so: and that the accumulation of such
capital […] may go on for an indefinite
period…” (pp. 224-25).

“… the progress[s] of auxiliary
capital both increases the command of man over the powers of
the soil, relatively to the ||1129| amount of labor directly or
indirectly employed upon it; and diminishes the annual
return necessary to make the progressive employment of
given quantities of fresh capital profitable…”
(p. 227).

“If we suppose any capital
(£100 for instance) employed upon the soil, wholly in
paying the wages of labor, and yielding 10 per cent profit,
the revenue of the farmer will […] be one-tenth that
of the laborers. If the capital be doubled[t] […] then the
revenue of the farmers will continue to bear the same
proportion to that of the laborers. But if the number
of laborers remaining the same, the amount of capital is
doubled, profits […] become £20, or one-fifth
of the revenue [… ] If the capital be
quadrupled, profits become £40, or two-fifths of the
revenue of the laborers: if the capital be increased to
£500, profits would become £50, or half the
revenue of the laborers. And the wealth, the
influence, and probably to some extent, the numbers of the
capitalists in the community, would be proportionably
increased… A great increase of capital
[…] usually makes the employment of some
additional direct labor necessary. This
circumstance, however, will not prevent the steady
progress of the relative increase of the auxiliary
capital” (pp. 231-32).

The first important point in this passage is that, with
the increase in capital, the auxiliary capital increases in
comparison to the variable capital, in other words, that the
latter declines relatively in comparison with the
constant capital.

The fact that the annual returns decline in
proportion to the capital advanced if there is an increase
in that part of the auxiliary capital which consists of
fixed capital, that is, if its turnover period extends over
several years—its value only entering into the product
annually in the form of depreciation—is not a
phenomenon peculiar to agriculture, but a general one.
Although, in industry, the raw material worked up during the
year increases even more rapidly than the size of the fixed
capital. Compare, for example, the amount of raw
cotton which a spinning-jenny consumes weekly or annually
with that used up by a spinning-wheel. But suppose,
for example, that in (large-scale) tailoring the same amount
of raw material in terms of value is worked up
(although not the same physical amount, the raw material
being dearer than that used in spinning), then the annual
return in tailoring will be considerably larger than in
spinning, because a greater part of the (fixed) capital laid
out in the latter only enters into the product as annual
depreciation.

The value of the annual return in agriculture
(where what one can regard as the raw material, the seed,
does not increase in the same proportion as the other
elements of constant capital, especially fixed capital) is
naturally smaller if the capital increases as a result of an
increase in the constant capital only and not in the
variable. For the variable capital must be entirely
replaced in the product, the other [constant capital] only
insofar as it is consumed annually. If it is assumed
that the price of grain is given, when a quarter is
equal to l0s., 220 quarters are required to replace a
capital of £100 at a profit of 10 per cent, whereas
only 60 quarters (£30) are required to replace a wear
and tear amounting to £20 and a profit of
£10. A smaller absolute return yields the same
profit (as is the case in industry in similar
circumstances). Jones’s reasoning, however, contains
several fallacies.

First of all, it cannot be asserted (on the assumptions
made) that the productive powers of the soil have
increased. They have increased in comparison with the
labour employed directly, but not compared with the total
capital employed. All that can be said is that less
gross produce is necessary in order to yield the same
net produce, i.e., the same profit as before.

||1130| Further, the
increase in the farmer’s revenue in comparison to that of
the labourers, is important in this special
sphere insofar as here the part of the total product which
constitutes
profit increases, and goes on increasing,
relatively to that part which goes to the labourers.
As a result, the wealth and influence of the farming
capitalist as compared to his labourers undoubtedly grow and
expand. But Jones seems to make the following
calculation: [£]10 on [£]100 is
1/10. £20 on £120
(i.e., £100 expended in labour and £20
depreciation) is 1/6 and the £20
is 1/5 of the sum paid out to the
workers, etc. But nothing is more fallacious than
that, generally speaking, the rate of profit can increase
while the amount of capital laid out on labour
declines. Exactly the opposite takes place.
Proportionally less surplus-value is produced, and the rate
of profit therefore falls. As regards the farmer
specifically (and also each particular enterprise taken in
isolation) the rate of profit may remain the same whether he
employs three workers or six workers with a capital of
£200.

The fact that rent is equal to surplus profit, i.e., to
the excess over and above the average profit, presupposes
not only that agriculture is formally subordinated to
capitalist production, but also that equalisation of rates
of profit takes place in the various spheres of production,
specifically also between agriculture and industry. If
this is not the case rent (like profit) may be equal to the
surplus over wages. It may even represent a
part of profit or be a deduction from wages.

2. Richard Jones, “An Introductory
Lecture on Political Economy etc.” [The Concept of the
“Economical Structure of Nations”. Jones’s
Confusion with regard to the “Labor Fund”]

Richard Jones, An Introductory Lecture on Political
Economy, delivered at King’s College, London,
27th February, 1833. To which is added a
Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on the Wages of Labor,
London, 1833.

[In the Introductory Lecture, Jones says: ]

“… property in the soil almost
universally rests, at one time of a people’s career, either
in the general government, or in persons deriving their
interest from it” (p. 14).

“… by economical structure of
nations, I mean those relations between the different
classes which are established in the first instance by the
institution of property in the soil, and by the distribution
of its surplus produce; afterwards modified and changed (to
a greater or less extent) by the introduction of
capitalists as agents in producing and exchanging
wealth, and in feeding and employing the labouring
population” (pp. 21-22). |1130||

||1130| By “labour
fund” Jones understands:

“…the aggregate amount of the
revenues consumed by the laborers, whatever be the source of
those revenues” ([Syllabus,] p. 44).

The main point (the term “labor fund”
probably comes from Malthus?) in Jones’s work is that
the whole economic structure of society revolves around the
form of labour, in other words, the form in which the
worker appropriates his means of subsistence, or that part
of his product upon which he lives. This labour fund
has various forms and capital is merely one of them,
it is a form which arises rather late in the historical
development. It is only in Richard Jones’s work that
the important differentiation—between labour that is
paid out of capital and labour paid directly out of
revenue—made by Adam Smith receives the full
elaboration of which it is capable and becomes a major key
for understanding the various economic formations of
society. And with it disappears the absurd notion
that, because in capital the worker’s revenue first takes
the form of something appropriated, alias saved, by
the capitalist, this signifies more than a formal
difference.

“Even when we travel westward and
observe the more advanced European nations […] we can
[…] trace[u]
the effects of […] the social conformation which
results from the peculiar mode of distributing the produce
of their land and labor, established in the early period
||1131| of the existence of
agricultural nations” (p. 10) (namely a class of
agricultural labourers, secondly landlords, thirdly menials,
retainers and artisans who participate in the consumption of
the revenue of the landlords either directly or
indirectly).

Capital, that is, accumulated wealth employed
for the purpose of obtaining profit is the great agent,
the motive power which causes the changes that take
place in this economic conformation.[v]

“Let me assure you […] that
… in analysing the respective productive powers of
different nations,[w]
you will find the distinct division of wealth here pointed
out, acting a most important part in modifying the ties
which connect the different classes of the community, and in
determining their productive power” [p. 17].

“In Asia, and in part of Europe, (it
was formerly the case throughout Europe,) the
non-agricultural classes are almost wholly maintained
from the incomes of the other classes; principally from the
incomes of the landholders. If you want the labour of
an artisan, you provide him with materials; he comes to your
house, you feed and pay him his wages. After a time,
the
capitalist steps in, he provides the materials, he
advances the wages of the workman, he becomes his
employer, and he is the owner of the article
produced, which he exchanges for your
money… An intermediate class appears between
the landowners and a portion of the
non-agriculturists, upon which intermediate class,
those non-agriculturists are dependent for employment and
subsistence. The ties which formerly bound the
community together are worn out and fall to pieces; other
bonds, other principles of cohesion, connect its different
classes: new economical relations spring into
being… Not only is the[x] great body of non-agriculturists
almost wholly in[y]
the pay of capitalists, but even the labouring cultivators
of the soil […] are their servants too”
(loc. cit., pp. 18-19).

The Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on the Wages of
Labor differs from the book on rent in this: the book
examines the different forms of landed property to which
different social forms of labour correspond. In the
Syllabus, these different forms of labour are the
point of departure and both the different forms of landed
property and capital are regarded as their offspring.
The determinate social form of the worker’s labour
corresponds to the form which the conditions of
labour—that is, in particular, the land, nature, since
this relationship embraces all others—assume in
respect of the worker. But the former is in fact
merely the objective expression of the latter.

We shall see, therefore, that the different forms of the
labour fund correspond to the different ways in which the
worker confronts his own conditions of production. The
manner in which he appropriates his product (or part of it)
depends on his relations to his conditions of
production.

The “Labor Fund,” says Jones, “may be
divided […] into three […] classes.

“1st.—Revenues which are
produced by the laborers who consume them, and never belong
to any other persons.” (In this case, quite
irrespective of the particular form, the worker must
in fact be the owner of his instruments of production.)

“2nd.—Revenues belonging to
classes distinct from the laborers, and expended by those
classes in the direct maintenance of labor.

“3rd.—Capital in its
[…] proper sense […]

“These distinct branches of the Labor
Fund may all be observed in our own country; but when we
look abroad, we see those parts of that Fund, which are the
most limited here, constituting elsewhere the main sources
of subsistence to the population […] and determining
the character and position of the majority of the
people…” (pp. 45-46).

To point 1. “… the wages of laboring
cultivators, or occupying peasants…
Laboring[z]
cultivators, or peasants, may be divided into three
groups[aa]—
hereditary occupiers, proprietors, tenants.
The […] tenants may be subdivided into[bb]serfs, me
layers, cottiers; the last […] peculiar to
Ireland. Something which may be called rent, or
something which may be called profit, is often[cc] mixed up with the
revenues of peasant cultivators of all classes; but when
‘their subsistence is essentially dependent on the
reward of their manual labor’, they come within
the limits of our present inquiry”[dd] (p. 46).

The characteristic feature of these groups is that the
worker reproduces the labour fund for himself. It
is not transformed into capital. Just as the
worker directly produces the labour fund, so he appropriates
it directly, although his surplus labour may be appropriated
either wholly or in part by him himself or may be
appropriated entirely by other classes, depending on the
particular form which his relation to his conditions of
production assumes. It is entirely due to economic
prejudice that Jones describes this category as
wage-labourers. Nothing which characterises
wage-labourers exists amongst them. It is a pretty
bourgeois economic fancy that, because that part of the
product which the worker appropriates to himself under
capitalism appears as wages, the part of his product
which the worker himself consumes must be wages.

With regard to point 2. “The laborers so maintained
are now limited in England to[ee] menial servants, soldiers
[…] sailors, and a few artizans working on their
own account, and paid out of the incomes of their
employers. Over a considerable portion of the
earth this branch of the General Labor Fund maintains nearly
the whole of the non-agricultural laborers
[… ] Former prevalence of this Fund in
England. Warwick the king-maker. The English
gentry. Present prevalence in the East.
Mechanics, menials. Large bodies of troops so
maintained. Consequences of the concentration of this
Fund throughout Asia in the hands of the sovereign.
Sudden rise of cities; sudden desertion. Samarcand;
Candahar, and others” (pp. 48-49).

Jones overlooks two main forms: the Asiatic communal
system with its unity of agriculture and industry. And
secondly, the urban craft guild system of the Middle Ages,
[which] also [existed] partially in the Ancient World.

With regard to point 3. Capital “should
never be confounded with the General Labor Fund of
the world—of which a large proportion consists of
[…] revenues [… ] All branches of a
nation’s revenues … contribute to the accumulations
by which capital is formed. They contribute in
different proportions in different countries and different
stages of society. When wages and rents contribute the
most” (p. 50).

Because surplus labour is converted into capital (instead
of being exchanged directly as revenue for labour), capital
seems to appear as something saved out of
revenue. Jones considers it mainly from this point of
view. And in the progress of society the great mass of
capital does, in fact, consist of revenue reconverted in
this way. But in the capitalist mode of production the
original labour fund itself likewise appears as something
saved by the capitalist. The reproduced labour
fund does not remain in the possession of the worker as in
case 1), but appears as the property of the capitalist and
confronts the worker as the property of someone
else. And this point is not elaborated by
Jones.

What Jones has to say about the rate of profits and its
influence on accumulation in the Course [of Lectures]
is rather inadequate:

“All other things being equal,
the power of a nation to save from its profits varies with
the rate of profits: is great when they are high,
less when low; but as the rate of profits decline, all
other things do not remain equal. The
quantities of capital employed relatively to the numbers
of the population may increase”
[p. 50].

<What Jones does not understand is how, as a result
of the “may” increase, the rate of
profits sinks because “the quantities of
capital employed relatively to the numbers of the
population have increased”. But he
approaches close to the correct view.>

“Inducements and facilities to
accumulate may increase… a low rate of
profits is ordinarily accompanied by a rapid rate of
accumulation, relatively to the numbers of the people,
as in England, and a high rate of profit by a slower
rate of accumulation, relatively to the numbers of
[…] people, ||1133| as
in Poland, Russia, India, etc…”
(pp. 50-51).

Where the rate of profit is high (apart from cases where,
as in North America, there is capitalist production on the
one hand and, on the other hand, the value of all
agricultural produce is low) it is generally due to
the fact that capital consists
mainly of variable capital, that is, direct labour
predominates. Assume a capital of 100, of which
1/5 is variable capital. And
assume further that the surplus labour amounts to a third of
a working-day. In this case, profit would amount to 10
per cent. Assume [on the other hand] that
4/5 of the capital consists of
variable capital and that surplus labour amounts to
1/6 of the working-day. In this
case, profit would amount to 16 per cent.

“Error of the doctrine, that
whenever, in the progress of nations, the rate of
profit declines, the means of providing subsistence for
an increasing population must be becoming less.
Foundations of this error: 1st. A mistaken notion, that
accumulation from profits must be slow where the rate of
profits is low, and rapid where it is high. 2d. A
mistaken belief that profits are the only source of
accumulation. 3d. A mistaken belief that all the
laborers of the earth subsist on accumulations and
savings from revenue, and never on revenue
itself” (p. 51).

[Jones speaks of]

“Alterations which take place in the
economical structure of nations when capital assumes the
task of advancing the wages of labour”. |1133||

||1157| Richard Jones sums
up correctly in the following passage: |1157||

||1133|
“The amount of capital devoted to
the maintenance of labour may vary, independently of any
changes in the whole amount of capital.” (This
proposition is important.) “Great fluctuations
in the amount of employment and great suffering […]
may sometimes be observed to become more frequent as
capital itself becomes more plentiful”
(p. 52). |1133||

||1157| The total amount of
capital may remain the same and a change
(decline especially) may take place in the variable
capital. A change in the proportion between the two
constituent parts of capital does not necessarily involve a
change in the size of the total [capital].

An increase in the total capital, on the other hand, may
be accompanied not only by a relative, but by an absolute
diminution of variable capital and is always connected with
violent fluctuations in the variable capital and
consequently with “fluctuations in the amount of
employment”. |1157||

[Later on in the Syllabus, Jones writes: ]

||1133| “Periods of
gradual transition of the laborers from dependence on one
fund to dependence on another… Transfer of the
laboring cultivators to the pay of capitalists…
Transfer of non-agricultural classes to the employ of
capitalists”… (pp. 52-53).

What Jones calls “transfer” here, is what I
call “primitive accumulation”. This is
merely a formal difference. It is also
in contradiction to the absurd notion of
“savings”.

***

Slavery: “Slaves may be divided into
pastoral—predial—domestic— slaves of a
mixed character, between predial and domestic…
We find them[ff] as
cultivating peasants;—as menials or artisans,
maintained from the incomes of the rich;—as
laborers maintained from capital” (p. 59).

But so long as slavery is predominant, the capital
relationship can only be sporadic and subordinate, never
dominant.

3. Richard Jones, “Text-book of Lectures on the
Political Economy of Nations”, Hertford, 1852

[a) Jones’s Views Of Capital and the Problem of
Productive and Unproductive Labour]

[Jones writes in the Text-book of Lectures on the
Political Economy of Nations:]

“The productiveness of the industry
of nations really depends […] on two
circumstances. First, on the fertility or
barrenness of the original sources”(land and
water) “of the wealth they produce. Secondly, on
the efficiency of the labour they apply in dealing
with those sources, or fashioning the commodities they
obtained from them” (p. 4).

“… the efficiency of human
labor will depend—

“1st.—On the continuity
with which it is exerted.

“2ndly.—On the knowledge
and skill with which it is applied, to effect the
purpose of the producer.

“3rdly.—On the mechanical
power by which it is aided…” (p. 6).

“The power exerted by human
labourers in producing wealth … may be increased
[… ]

“1st.—By enlisting in their
service, motive forces greater than their
own…

“2ndly.—By employing any amount
or kind of motive ||1134|
forces at their command, with increased mechanical
advantage [… ] Let a steam-engine with a
motive force of 40 horses be attached to a loaded train on a
common turnpike road [and it will make but little way: level
the road perfectly… and it will move at a rapid
pace[gg]]”
(p. 8.)

“The best form of a plough […]
will do as much work, and as well, with two horses, as the
worst with four” (p. 9).

“The steam-engine is not a mere
tool, it gives additional motive force, not
merely the means of using forces the labourer already
possesses, with a greater mechanical advantage”
(p. 10, note).

This is, therefore, according to Jones, the difference
between a tool and machinery. The former provides the
worker with means for employing the power he possesses to a
greater mechanical advantage, the latter provides an
increase of motive force. (?)

“Capital … consists of
wealth saved from revenue, and used with a view to
profit” (p. 16). “The possible sources
of capital […] are obviously, all the revenues of all
the individuals composing a community, from which revenues
it is possible that any saving can be made. The
particular classes of income which yield the most abundantly
to the progress of national capital, change at different
stages of their progress, and are therefore found
entirely different in nations occupying different
positions in that progress” (p. 16).

Profit is therefore by no means the only source from
which capital is formed or augmented: it is even an
unimportant source of accumulation, compared with wages and
rents, in the earlier stages of society[hh] (p. 20).

“… when a considerable advance
in the powers of national industry has actually taken place,
profits rise into comparative importance as a source of
accumulation” (p. 21).

According to this, capital is a part of the wealth which
constitutes revenue, the part which is expended not as
revenue but for the purpose of producing profit.
Profit is already a form of surplus-value which specifically
presupposes capital. If the capitalist mode of
production, i.e., capital, is postulated, then the
explanation is correct; in other words, if one postulates
what has to be explained. But here Jones means all
revenue spent, not as revenue, but with the aim of
enrichment, that is, productively.

Two aspects are, however, important in this context.

First: To a certain extent accumulation of wealth
takes place in all stages of economic development, that is,
partly an expansion of the scale of production and partly,
the accumulation of treasure, etc. As long as wages
and rents predominate—that is, according to what was
said earlier, as long as the greater part of the surplus
labour and surplus product which does not accrue to the
worker himself, goes to the landowner (the State in Asia)
and, on the other hand, the worker reproduces his labour
fund himself, i.e., he not only produces his own wages
himself, but pays them to himself, usually, moreover,
(almost always in that state of society) he is also able to
appropriate at least a part of his surplus labour and his
surplus product—in this state of society, wages and
rent are the main sources of accumulation as well. (In
these circumstances profit is restricted to merchants,
etc.) Only when the capitalist mode of production has
become predominant, when it does not merely exist
sporadically, but has subordinated to itself the mode of
production of society; when in fact the capitalist directly
appropriates the whole surplus labour and surplus product in
the first instance,
although he has to hand over portions of it to the
landowner, etc.—only then does profit become the
principal source of capital, of accumulation, of wealth
saved from revenue and used with a view to profit.
This at the same time presupposes (as is implicit in the
domination of the capitalist mode of production) that
“a considerable advance in the power of national
industry has actually taken place”.

Jones thus answers those asses who imagine that no
accumulation can take place without the profit yielded by
capital or who justify profit by saying that the capitalist
makes a sacrifice in order to save from his revenue
for productive purposes, by pointing out that in this
particular (capitalist) mode of production the function
“of accumulating” devolves principally on the
capitalist whereas, in previous modes of production, it was
the labourer himself and, in part, the landlord who played
the chief roles in this process and profit played hardly any
part in it.

Naturally the function [of accumulating] always devolves
on those, 1) who pocket the surplus-value and, 2) among
those who pocket the surplus-value in particular on the
person who also acts as agent in the production process
itself. By saying, therefore, ||1135| that profit is justified
by the fact that the capitalist “saves”
his capital out of profit and that he fulfils the function
of accumulating, one merely says that the capitalist mode of
production is justified because it exists—this,
however, applies equally to the modes of production which
preceded it and those which will succeed it. If one
says that otherwise accumulation would be impossible, then
one forgets that this particular method of accumulation
through the agency of the capitalist has come into existence
at a certain historical stage and is moving towards the
historical date when it will cease to exist.

Secondly, once so much accumulated wealth has been
concentrated in the hands of capitalists per fas et
nefas[ii]
that they can dominate production, then the greater part of
existing capital—after a certain lapse of
time—can be considered as having been derived only
from profit (revenue), that is, from capitalised
surplus-value.

A point which Jones does not sufficiently emphasise, and
which he really only implies tacitly, is this: If the
labouring producer pays himself his own wages and if his
product does not at first assume the “shape” of
other people’s revenue from
which savings are made and then paid back by these people
to the labourer, it is necessary that the labourer be in
possession of his conditions of production (as property
owner, or tenant, or hereditary occupier, etc.). In
order that his wages and consequently the labour fund can
confront him as alien capital, these conditions of
production must have been lost to him and have assumed the
shape of alien property. Only after his conditions of
production together with his labour fund have been wrested
from him and when, as capital, they are rendered
independent in relation to him, does the further process
begin, which is not concerned with the mere reproduction of
these original conditions of production, but with their
further development so that both the conditions of
production and the labour fund confront the labourer as
something “saved” from other people’s revenue in
order to be converted into capital. By losing
possession of his conditions of production, and hence, of
his labour fund, the labourer also loses the function of
accumulating, and every addition he makes to wealth appears
in the shape of other people’s revenue which must first be
“saved” by these people, that is to say, it must
not be spent as revenue, if it is to perform the functions
of capital and labour fund for the labourer.

Since Jones himself describes a state of affairs in which
things have not yet reached this stage and where unity
prevails, he certainly should have described this
“separation” as the real generation
process of capital. Once this separation exists, this
process does indeed take place and it continues and extends,
since the surplus labour of the worker always confronts him
as the revenue of others, through the saving of which alone
wealth can be accumulated and the scale of production
extended.

The reconversion of revenue into capital. If
capital (i.e., the separation of the conditions of
production from the labourer) is the source of profit (i.e.,
of the fact that surplus labour appears as the revenue of
capital and not of labour) then profit becomes the source of
capital, of new capital formation, i.e., of the fact that
the additional conditions of production confront the worker
as capital, as a means for maintaining him as a worker and
of appropriating his surplus labour anew. The original
unity between the worker and the conditions of production
<abstracting from slavery, where the labourer himself
belongs to the objective conditions of production> has
two main forms: the Asiatic communal system (primitive
communism) and small-scale agriculture based on the family
(and linked
with domestic industry) in one form or another.
Both are embryonic forms and both are equally unfitted to
develop labour as social labour and the productive
power of social labour. Hence the necessity for the
separation, for the rupture, for the antithesis of labour
and property (by which property in the conditions of
production is to be understood). The most extreme form
of this rupture, and the one in which the productive forces
of social labour are also most powerfully developed, is
capital. The original unity can be reestablished only
on the material foundation which capital creates and by
means of the revolutions which, in the process of this
creation, the working class and the whole society
undergo.

Another point which Jones does not sufficiently emphasise
is this:

Revenue which is exchanged as such against
labour—if it is not the revenue of a labourer who
works himself and employs an additional workman—is the
revenue of the landowner, itself derived from the rent which
the labourer pays him, and which the landlord does not
entirely consume in kind, either by himself or together with
his menials and retainers, but a part of which he uses to
buy the products or services of additional workmen and so
on. This always presupposes the first
relationship.

||1136| <In the same
way as part of the profit is classified as interest, even if
the industrial capitalist employs only his own capital,
because this form [of revenue] has a separate mode of
existence, so, given the capitalist mode of production, even
if the labourer—who does not employ any other
labourers—owns his means of production, they are
regarded as capital and the part of his own labour realised
by him over and above the ordinary wage appears to be profit
yielded by his capital. He himself is then divided up
into different economic categories. As his own
workman, he gets his wages, and as capitalist, he gets his
profits. This observation belongs to the chapter
“Revenue and Its Sources”.>

“… there is a difference
between the influence, on the productive powers of nations,
of that wealth which has been saved, and is
dispensed as wages with a view to profit; and of that
wealth which is advanced out of revenue for the support of
labour. With a view to this distinction, I use the
word capital to denote that portion of wealth
exclusively which has been saved from revenue, and is used
with a view to profit” (op. cit., pp. 36-37).

“We might … comprise, under
the […] term, capital, all the wealth devoted to
the maintenance of labour, whether it has gone through
any previous process of saving or not…
we must, then, in tracing the position of the labouring
classes and of their paymasters in different nations and
under
different circumstances, distinguish between
capital which has been saved, and capital which
has undergone no process of accumulation; between, in
short, capital which is revenue, and capital which is not
revenue…”(p. 36). “… in
every country[jj] of
the Old World, except England and Holland, the wages
of the agriculturists are not advanced out of funds which
have been saved and accumulated from revenues, but are
produced by the labourers themselves, and never
exist in any other shape than that of a stock for their
own immediate consumption” (p. 37).

What distinguishes Jones from the other economists
(except perhaps Sismondi) is that he emphasises that the
essential feature of capital is its socially determined
form, and that he reduces the whole difference between the
capitalist and other modes of production to this distinct
form. It is that labour is directly converted into
capital and that, on the other hand, this capital buys
labour not for the sake of its use-value, but in order to
increase its own value, to create surplus-value (i.e., a
larger amount of exchange-value) and to use it “with a
view to profit”.

This shows, however, at the same time that the saving of
revenue in order to convert it into capital and
“accumulation” are distinguished from other
methods only through the form in which “wealth
is devoted to the maintenance of labour.” The
agricultural labourers in England and Holland who receive
wages which are “advanced” by capital produce
“their wages themselves” just like the French
peasant or the self-supporting Russian serf. If the
production process is considered in its continuity, then the
capitalist advances the labourer as “wages”
today only a part of the product which the labourer
produced yesterday. Thus the difference [between the
capitalist and other modes of production] does not lie in
the fact that, in one case, the labourer produces his own
wages and in the other case he does not produce them.
The difference lies in the fact that [in one case] his
product appears as wages; that in this case, the
worker’s product (i.e., the part of the product produced by
the worker which makes up the labour fund) 1) appears as the
revenue of others; 2) that then, however, it is not
expended as revenue, and not spent on labour by means of
which revenue is directly consumed, but, 3) that it
confronts the worker as capital which returns to him
this portion of the product, in exchange not merely for an
equivalent but for more labour than the product he receives
contains. Thus his product appears in the first place
as revenue of others, secondly, as something which is
“saved” from revenue in
order to be employed in the purchase of labour with a view
to profit; in other words it is employed as
capital.

And this process in which his own product confronts him
as capital, is what is described as the labour fund,
which “has gone through a previous process of
saving”, which “…has undergone a process
of accumulation” prior to being converted into the
labourer’s means of subsistence, “…exists in
another shape” (here it is expressly stated
that merely a change of form takes place) “than
that of a stock for their” (the labourers’)
“immediate consumption”. The whole
difference lies in the transformation which the
labour fund produced by the worker undergoes before it comes
back to him in the form of wages. In the case of
peasants or independent artisans, it therefore never assumes
the form of “wages”.

||1137| “Saving”
and “accumulation”—as far as the labour
fund is concerned—are mere names here for the
transformations which the worker’s product undergoes.
The labourer working on his own account consumes his product
just like the wage-labourer, or rather, the latter does so
just like the former. But in the case of the
wage-earner, his product appears to be something
saved or accumulated from the revenue of someone
else, i.e., from the revenue of the capitalist. In
fact, however, it is this process that makes it possible for
the capitalist to “save” or
“accumulate” the labourer’s surplus labour for
his own purposes, and this is the reason why Jones places
such great emphasis on the fact that, in non-capitalist
modes of production, accumulation does not arise from
profit, but from wages, in other words, from the income of
the self-supporting cultivator or the artisan who exchanges
his labour directly for revenue (otherwise how could the
middle class have arisen out of the latter?) and from the
rent of the landlord. But for the labour fund to
undergo these transformations, the conditions of production
must confront the labourer as capital, which is not the case
in the other modes of production. The expansion of
wealth does not appear to be due to the labourer in
the latter case [the capitalist mode of production ], but to
the saving of profit, the reconversion of surplus-value into
capital, in the same way as the labour fund itself (before
its expansion as a result of new accumulation) confronts the
labourer as capital.

“Saving”, taken literally, only
makes sense with regard to the capitalist who capitalises
his revenue, in contrast to the
capitalist who consumes his revenue, i.e., spends it as
revenue, but it is meaningless when applied to relations
between capitalist and labourer.

Two cardinal facts about capitalist production:

[First,] concentration of the means of production in a
few hands so that they no longer appear as the immediate
property of the individual labourer, but as factors of
social production, even though in the first instance they
appear as the property of the non-working capitalists, who
are their trustees in bourgeois society and enjoy all the
fruits of this trusteeship.

Second: Organisation of labour itself as social labour
brought about by co-operation, division of labour and the
linking of labour with the results of social domination over
natural forces.

In both these ways, capitalist production eliminates
private property and private labour, even though as yet in
antagonistic forms.

The main difference between productive and unproductive
labour noted by Adam Smith, is that the former is exchanged
directly for capital and the latter for revenue—and
the full meaning of this difference emerges first in
Jones. His work shows that the first kind of labour is
characteristic of the capitalist mode of production, and the
second—where it is predominant—belongs to
earlier modes of production, and, where it merely plays a
subordinate role, is restricted (or ought to be restricted)
to spheres which are not directly concerned with the
production of wealth.

“… capital is the
instrument through which all the causes which augment the
efficiency of human labour, and the productive powers of
nations, are brought into play… Capital is the
stored-up results of past labour used to produce some
effect in some part of the task of producing wealth”
(p. 35).

(In the note on page 35, he says:

“It will be convenient, and it is
reasonable, to consider the act of production as incomplete
till the commodity produced has been placed in the hands of
the person who is to consume it; all done previously has
that point in view. The grocer’s horse and cart which
brings up our tea from Hertford to the College, is as
essential to our possession of it for the purposes of
consumption, as the labour of the Chinese who picked and
dried the leaves.”)

“But … this capital
… does not perform in every community all the
tasks it is capable of performing. It takes them
up gradually and successively in all cases; and it is a
remarkable and an all-important fact, that the one special
function, the performance of which is essential
to the serious advance of the power of capital in all its
other functions, is exactly that which, in the case of
the greater portion of the labourers of mankind, capital
has never yet fulfilled at all” (pp. 35-36).

“I allude to the advance of the
wages of labour” (p. 36).

“The wages of labour are advanced by
capitalists in the case of less than one-fourth of the
labourers of the earth [….] this fact … of
vital importance in accounting for the comparative progress
of nations” (loc. cit.)

||1138| “Capital, or
accumulated stock, after performing various other functions
in the production of wealth, only takes up late that of
advancing to the labourer his wages”
(p. 79).

In the last sentence on page 79, capital is indeed
described as a “relation”, not merely as
“accumulated stock” but as a quite definite
relation of production. The “stock” cannot
“take up the function of advancing wages”.
Jones, moreover, emphasises that it is the basic form of
capital—the form which gives the whole process of
social production its distinctive character, dominates it,
leads to a quite new development of the productive forces of
social labour, and revolutionises all social and political
relationships—that confronts wage-labour, and pays
wages. He emphasises that before capital performs this
function, which is of decisive importance, it fulfils other
functions and, appears in other, subordinate and
historically earlier forms, but that its “power in all
its functions” only develops fully when it steps forth
as industrial capital. On the other hand, in the third
lecture “On the gradual manner in which capital
or capitalists” <there’s the rub in this
“or”; accumulated stock becomes capital
only because of this personification> “undertake
successive functions in the production of wealth”,
Jones does not indicate what the previous functions
are. They can indeed only be those of capital engaged
in commerce or banking. But although Jones comes so
close to the correct concept and even expresses it in a
certain fashion, nevertheless, being an economist, he is so
enmeshed in bourgeois fetishism that not even the devil
could be certain that he does not mean that
“accumulated stock” as such, can perform
different functions.

The sentence:

“Capital, or accumulated
stock, after performing various other functions in the
production of wealth, only takes up late that of
advancing to the labourer his wages”
(p. 79)

is the most complete expression of the contradiction; on
the one hand, it expresses a correct historical conception
of capital, but, on the other hand, a shadow is cast over it
by the narrow-minded notion of the economist that
“stock” as such is capital. Hence
“the accumulated stock” becomes a person who
“performs the function of advancing wages” to
men. Jones is still rooted in economic prejudice when
he solves [the problem], a solution
becomes necessary as soon as the capitalist mode of
production is regarded as a determinate historical category
and no longer as an eternal natural relation of
production.

One can see what a great leap forward there was from
Ramsay to Jones. Ramsay regards precisely that
function of capital which makes it capital—the
advancing of wages—as accidental, due only to the
poverty of the people, and irrelevant to the production
process as such. In this narrow circumscribed manner,
Ramsay denies the necessity for the capitalist mode
of production. Jones, on the other hand, <strange
that they were both priests of the Established Church.
The ministers of the English Church seem to think more than
their continental brethren> demonstrates that it is
precisely this function that makes capital capital and gives
rise to the most characteristic features of the capitalist
mode of production. He shows how this form occurs only
at a certain level of development of the productive forces
and that it then creates an entirely new material
basis. Consequently, however, his comprehension of the
fact that this form “can be superseded” and of
the merely transitory historical necessity for this form, is
quite different from that of Ramsay and more profound.
He by no means regards capitalist relations as eternal.

“… a state of things may
hereafter exist, and parts of the world may be
approaching to it, under which the labourers and the
owners of accumulated stock, may be identical; but in the
progress of nations … this has never yet been
the case, and to trace and understand that progress,
we must observe the labourers gradually transferred from the
hands of a body of customers, who pay them out of their
revenues, to those of a body of employers, who pay them by
advances of capital out of the returns to which the owners
aim at realizing a distinct revenue. This may not be
as desirable a state of things as that in which labourers
and capitalists are identified, but we must still
accept it as constituting a stage in the march of
industry, which has hitherto marked the progress of
advancing nations. At that stage the people of Asia
have not yet arrived” (p. 73).

||1139| Here Jones states
quite explicitly that capital and the capitalist mode of
production are to be “accepted” merely as a
transitional phase in the development of social production,
a phase which, if one considers the development of the
productive forces of social labour, constitutes a gigantic
advance on all preceding forms, but which is by no means the
end result; on the contrary, the necessity of its
destruction is contained in the antagonism between
“owners of accumulated wealth” and the
“actual labourers”.

Jones was a professor of political economy at Haileybury
and the successor to Malthus. One can see here
how the real science of political economy ends by regarding
the bourgeois production relations as merely
historical ones, leading to higher relations in which
the antagonism on which they are based is resolved. By
analysing them political economy breaks down the apparently
mutually independent forms in which wealth appears.
This analysis (even in Ricardo’s works) goes so far
that:

1) The independent, material form of wealth
disappears and wealth is shown to be simply the activity
of men. Everything which is not the result of human
activity, of labour, is nature and, as such, is not social
wealth. The phantom of the world of goods fades away
and it is seen to be simply a continually disappearing and
continually reproduced objectivisation of human
labour. All solid material wealth is only transitory
materialisation of social labour, crystallisation of the
production process whose measure is time, the measure of a
movement itself.

2) The manifold forms in which the various component
parts of wealth are distributed amongst different sections
of society lose their apparent independence. Interest
is merely a part of profit, rent is merely surplus
profit. Both are consequently merged in profit, which
itself can be reduced to surplus-value, that is, to
unpaid labour. The value of the commodity itself,
however, can only be reduced to labour-time. The
Ricardian school reaches the point where it rejects one of
the forms of appropriation of this
surplus-value—landed property (rent)—as useless,
insofar as it is pocketed by private individuals. It
rejects the idea that the landowner can play a part in
capitalist production. The antithesis is thus reduced
to that between capitalist and wage-labourer. This
relationship, however, is regarded by the Ricardian school
as given, as a natural law, on which the production process
itself is based. The later economists go one step
further and, like Jones, admit only the historical
justification for this relationship. But from the
moment that the bourgeois mode of production and the
conditions of production and distribution which correspond
to it are recognised as historical, the delusion of
regarding them as natural laws of production vanishes and
the prospect opens up of a new society, [a new] economic
social formation, to which capitalism is only the
transition. |1139||

||1139| We still have to
consider a number of things in Jones’s work.

1) In what way, in particular, the capitalist mode of
production—the advancing of wages by capital—alters the
form and the productive forces.

2) His observations regarding accumulation and the rate
of profit.

But, first of all, another point has to be
emphasised.

||1140| “He[kk] has been but an
agent to give the labourers the benefit of the expenditure
of the revenues of the surrounding customers, in a new form
and under new circumstances…” (p. 79).

This refers to the non-agricultural labourers, whose
earnings previously came direct from the revenue of the
landowners, etc. Whereas previously they exchanged
their labour (or the product of their labour) directly for
that revenue, the capitalist exchanges the product of their
labour—collected and concentrated in his
hands—for that revenue, in other words, revenue is
transformed into, exchanged for capital, in that it
constitutes the returns on capital. Instead of being
direct returns for labour, it constitutes direct returns for
the capital that employs the labourers. |1140||

||1144| After describing
capital as a specific relation of production, the
essence of which is that accumulated wealth takes over the
function of advancing wages, and the labour fund itself
appears as “wealth saved from revenue and used with a
view to profit”, Jones outlines the changes in the
development of the productive forces characteristic of this
mode of production. How the (economic) relations and
consequently the social, moral and political state of
nations changes with the change in the material
powers of production, is very well explained.

“As communities change their
powers of production, they necessarily change their
habits too” (p. 48). “During their
progress in advance, all the different classes of the
community find that they are connected with other classes
by new relations, are assuming new positions,
and are surrounded by new moral and social dangers, and
new conditions of social and political
excellence” (loc. cit.).

He describes the influence of the capitalist form of
production on the development of the productive forces in
the following way. But before coming to this, a few
passages connected with those already quoted.

“Great political, social, moral and
intellectual changes, accompany changes in the economical
organization of communities, and the agencies and the
means, affluent or scanty, by which the tasks of industry
are carried on.
These changes necessarily exercise a commanding influence
over the different political and social elements to be found
in the populations where they take place; that influence
extends to the intellectual character, to the habits,
manners, morals, and happiness of nations”
(p. 45).

“England is the only great country
which has taken … the first step in advance
towards perfection as a producing machine; the only
country in which the population, agricultural as well as
non-agricultural, is ranged under the direction of
capitalists, and where the effects of their means and of the
peculiar functions they can alone perform, are extensively
felt, not only in the enormous growth of her wealth, but
also in all the economical relations and positions of her
population.

“Now England, I say it with regret,
but without the very slightest hesitation, is not to be
taken as a safe specimen ||1145| of the career of a people so
developing their productive forces” (pp. 48-49).

“The general labour fund
consists 1st.—Of wages which the labourers themselves
produce. 2ndly.—Of the revenues of other classes
expended in the maintenance of labour. 3rdly.—Of
capital, or of a portion of wealth saved from revenue and
employed in advancing wages with a view to profit.
Those maintained on the first division of the labour fund we
will call unhired labourers. Those on the
second, paid dependants. Those on the third,
hired workmen” (wage-labourers).
“The receipt of wages from any one of these divisions
of the labour fund determines the relations of the
labourer with the other classes of society, and so
determines sometimes directly, sometimes more or less
indirectly, the degree of continuity, skill, and power with
which the tasks of industry are carried on”
(pp. 51-52).

“The first division, self-produced
wages, maintains more than half, probably more than
two-thirds, of the labouring population of the earth.
These labourers consist everywhere of peasants who occupy
the soil and labour on it [… ] The second
division of the labour fund, revenue expended in
maintaining labour, supports by far the greater part of
the productive non-agricultural labourers of the
East. It is of some importance on the continent of
Europe; while in England, again, it comprises only a few
jobbing mechanics, the relics of a larger
body… The third division of the labour
fund, capital, is seen in England employing the great
majority of her labourers, while it maintains but a small
body of individuals in Asia: and in continental Europe,
maintains only the non-agricultural labourers; not
amounting, probably, on the whole, to a quarter of the
productive population” (p. 52).

“I have not … made any
distinction as to slave-labour… The
civil rights of labourers do not affect their
economical position. Slaves, as well as
freemen, may be observed subsisting on each branch of the
general fund” (p. 53).

Although the civil rights of the labourers do not affect
“their economical position”, their economical
position does affect their civil rights. Wage-labour
on a national scale—and consequently, the capitalist
mode of production as well—is only possible where the
workers are personally free. It is based on the
personal freedom of the workers.

Jones quite correctly reduces Smith’s productive and
nonproductive labour to its essence—capitalist and
non-capitalist
labour—by correctly applying the distinction made
by Smith between labourers paid by capital and those paid
out of revenue. Jones himself, however, apparently
understands by productive and unproductive
labour, labour which enters into the production of material
[wealth] and that which does not. This follows from
the passage quoted, where he speaks of the productive
labourers who depend on revenue expended to maintain
them [p. 52].

Further:

“The portion of the community which
is unproductive of material wealth may be
useful, or it may be useless”
(p. 42).

“… it is reasonable, to
consider the act of production as incomplete till the
commodity produced has been placed in the hands of
the person who is to consume it…” (p. 35,
note).

The distinction made between the labourers who live on
capital and those who live on revenue is concerned with the
form of labour. It expresses the whole difference
between capitalist and non-capitalist modes of
production. On the other hand, the terms productive
and unproductive labourers in the narrow sense [are
concerned with] labour which enters into the production of
commodities (production here embraces all operations
which the commodity has to undergo from the first producer
to the consumer) no matter what kind of labour is applied,
whether it is manual labour or not ([including] scientific
labour), and labour which does not enter into, and whose aim
and purpose is not, the production of commodities.
This difference must be kept in mind and the fact that all
other sorts of activity influence material production and
vice versa in no way affects the necessity for making this
distinction.

[b) Jones on the Influence Which the Capitalist Mode
of Production Exerts on the Development of the Productive
Forces. Concerning the Conditions for the
Applicability of Additional Fixed Capital]

||1146| We now come to the
development of the productive forces by the
capitalist mode of production.

[Jones writes:]

“It may be as well to point out here
how this fact” <of the wages being advanced by
capital> “affects their powers of
production, or the continuity, the
knowledge, and the power, with which labour is
exerted… The capitalist who pays a workman may
assist the continuity of his labour.
First, by making such continuity possible; secondly,
by superintending and enforcing it. Many
large bodies of workmen throughout the world ply the street
for customers, and depend for wages on the casual
wants of persons who happen at
the moment to require their services, or to want the
articles they can supply. The early missionaries found
this the case in China. ‘The artizans run about
the towns from morning to night to seek custom. The
greater part of Chinese workmen work in private
houses. Are clothes wanted, for example? The
tailor comes to you in the morning and goes home at
night. It is the same with all other artizans.
They are continually running about the streets in search of
work, even the smiths, who carry about their hammer and
their furnace for ordinary jobs. The barbers,
too… walk about the streets with an armchair on their
shoulders, and a basin and boiler for hot water in their
hands.’ This continues to be the case very generally
throughout the East, and partially in the Western World.

“Now these workmen cannot for any
length of time work continuously. They must ply
like a hackney coachman, and when no customer happens to
present himself they must be idle. If in the progress
of time a change takes place in their economical position,
if they become the workmen of a capitalist who advances
their wages beforehand, two things take place.
First, they can now labour continuously; and,
secondly, an agent is provided, whose office and whose
interest it will be, to see that they do labour
continuously… the capitalist […] has
resources … to wait for a customer…
Here, then, is an increased continuity in the labour
of all this class of persons. They labour daily
from morning to night, and are not interrupted by
waiting for or seeking the customer, who is ultimately to
consume the article they work on.

“But the continuity of their
labour, thus made possible, is secured and improved by
the superintendence of the capitalist. He
has advanced their wages; he is la receive the
products of their labour. It is his interest
and his privilege to see that they do not labour
interruptedly or dilatorily.

“The continuity of labour thus far
secured, the effect even of this change on the productive
power of labour is very great… the power is
doubled. Two workmen steadily employed from
morning to night, and from year’s and to year’s end,
will probably produce more than four desultory workmen, who
consume much of their time in running after customers, and
in recommencing suspended labour” (pp. 37-38).

[With regard to the passages quoted]

Firstly. The transition from labourers who
perform casual services—making clothes, coats,
trousers, etc., in the landowner’s house—to workers
employed by capital, is already very well described by
Turgot.

Second. Although continuity certainly
distinguishes capitalist labour from the form described by
Jones, it does not distinguish capitalist labour from slave
production carried on on a large scale.

Third. It is incorrect to describe the
increased amount of labour brought about by its long
duration and continuity as an increase in productive power
or the power of labour. This [occurs] only insofar as
the continuity augments the personal skill of the
labourers. By [increased] power, we understand the
greater
productivity of a given quantity of labour employed, not
any change in the quantity employed. The latter
belongs rather to the formal subordination of labour to
capital and it only evolves fully with the development of
fixed capital. (We shall deal with this soon.)

Jones correctly emphasises the fact that the capitalist
regards labour as his property, no part of which must be
wasted. With regard to labour which is maintained
directly by revenue, this is a matter of the use-value of
labour only.

||1147| Furthermore, Jones
correctly emphasises that the continuous labour of the
non-agricultural labourers lasting from morning to night is
by no means something which arises spontaneously, but is
itself a product of economic development. In
contrast to the Asiatic form and to the Western form of
labour (prevailing in former times, partly even today) in
the countryside, the urban labour of the Middle Ages already
constitutes a great advance and serves as a preparatory
school for the capitalist mode of production, as regards the
continuity and steadiness of labour.

<About this continuity of labour:

“The capitalist, too, keeps, as it
were, an echo-office for labour; he insures
against the uncertainty of finding a vent for labour,
which uncertainty would, but for him, prevent the labour, in
many cases, from being undertaken. The trouble of
looking for a purchaser, and of going to a market, is
reduced, by his means, to a comparatively small
compass” (An Inquiry into those Principles,
respecting the Nature of Demand and the Necessity of
Consumption, lately advocated by Mr. Malthus etc.,
London, 1821, p. 102).

In the same work:

“… where the capital is in a
great degree fixed, or where it is sunk on
land… the trader is obliged to continue
to employ, much more nearly (than if there had been less
fixed capital) the same amount of circulating capital as he
did before, in order not to cease to derive any
profits from the part that is fixed” (op. cit.,
p. 73).>

< [Jones says further:]

“… of the state of manners to
which the dependence of the workmen on the revenues of their
customers has given birth in China, you would, perhaps, get
the most striking picture, in the Chinese Exhibition, so
long kept open by its American proprietor in London.
It is thronged with figures of artizans with their small
packs of tools, plying for customers, and idle when none
appear—painting vividly to the eye the necessary
absence, in their case, of that continuity of labour
which is one of the three great elements of its
productiveness, and indicating sufficiently, to any
well-informed observer, the absence also of fixed capital
and machinery, hardly less important elements of the
fruitfulness of industry” (Richard Jones,
[Text-book of Lectures on the Political Economy of
Nations, Hertford, 1852,] p. 73).

“In India,
where the admixture of Europeans has not changed the scene,
a like spectacle may be seen in the towns. The
artizans in rural districts are, however, provided for there
in a peculiar manner… Such handicraftsmen and
other non-agriculturists as were actually necessary in a
village were maintained by an assignment of a portion of the
joint revenues of the villagers, and throughout the country
bands of hereditary workmen existed on this fund, whose
industry supplied the simple wants and tastes which the
cultivators did not provide for by their own hands.
The position and rights of these rural artizans soon became,
like all rights in the East, hereditary. The band
found its customers in the other villagers. The
villagers were stationary and abiding, and so were their
handicraftsmen.

“The artizans of the towns
were and are in a very different position. They
received their wages from what was substantially the same
fund—surplus revenue from land—but modified in
its mode of distribution and its distributors, so as to
destroy their sedentary permanence, and produce
frequent and usually disastrous migrations…
such artizans are not confined to any location by
dependence on masses of fixed capital” (as in
Europe, for example, where cotton and other manufactories
are “fixed in districts in which water-power, or the
fuel which produces steam, are reasonably abundant, and
[…] considerable masses of wealth have been converted
into buildings and machinery” etc.).
“… the case is different when the ||1148| sole dependence of the
labourers is on the direct receipt of part of the
revenues of the persons who consume the commodities the
artizans produce… They are not confined to
the neighbourhood of any fixed capital. If their
customers change their location for long—nay,
sometimes for very short—periods, the non-agricultural
labourers must follow them, or starve”
(pp. 73-74).

“… the […] greater part
of that[ll]
fund” for the handicraftsmen in Asia is
“distributed by the State and its officers. The
capital was, necessarily, the principal centre of
distribution…” (p. 75).

“From Samarcand, southward to
Beejapoor and Seringapatam, we can trace the ruins of
vanishing capitals, of which the population left them
suddenly” (and not as in other countries [as a
result of a gradual] decline) “as soon as new
centres of distribution of the royal revenues, that is,
of the whole of the surplus revenues of the soil, were
established” (p. 76).

See Dr. Bernier, who compares the Indian towns to
army camps. This is due to the form of landed property
which exists in Asia.>

***

We now proceed from the continuity to the division
of labour, [the development of] knowledge, use of machinery,
etc.

[Jones writes:]

“But the effect of the change of
paymasters on the continuity of labour is by no
means yet exhausted. The different tasks of
industry may now be further divided… if
he” (the capitalist) “employ more than one man,
he can divide the task between them; he can keep each
individual steadily at work at the
portion of the common task which he performs the
best… if the capitalist be rich, and keep a
sufficient number of workmen, then the task may be
subdivided as far as it is capable of
subdivision. The continuity of labour is then
complete… Capital, by assuming the function of
advancing the wages of labour, has now, by successive steps,
perfected its continuity. It, at the same time,
increases the knowledge and skill by which
such labour is applied to produce any given effect.

“The class of capitalists are from
the first partially, and they become ultimately completely,
discharged from the necessity of manual labour.
Their interest is that the productive powers of the
labourers they employ should be the greatest
possible. On promoting that power their attention
is fixed, and almost exclusively fixed. More
thought is brought to bear on the best means of effecting
all the purposes of human industry; knowledge
extends, multiplies its fields of action, and assists
industry in almost every branch…

“But further still, as to
mechanical power. Capital employed not to
pay, but to assist labour, we will call
auxiliary capital.”

<He therefore means by this term the part of
constant capital which is not made up of raw
material.>

“The national mass of auxiliary
capital may, certain conditions being fulfilled, increase
indefinitely: the number of labourers remaining the
same. At every step of such increase, there is an
increase in the third element of the efficiency of human
labour, namely, its mechanical power…
auxiliary capital thus increases its mass relatively to
the population… What conditions, then, must
be fulfilled that the mass of auxiliary capital employed to
assist them” <the workers employed by the
capitalist> “may increase?

“There must concur three things
—

“1st. The means of saving the
additional mass of capital.

“2ndly. The will to save it.

“3rdly. Some invention by which it
may be made possible, through the use of such capital, that
the productive powers of labour may be increased; and
increased to an extent which will make it, in addition to
the wealth it before produced, reproduce the additional
auxiliary capital used, as fast as destroyed, and also some
profit on it…

“When the full amount of auxiliary
capital, that in the actual state of knowledge can be used
profitably, has already been supplied … an
increased range of knowledge can alone point out the
means of employing more. Further, such employment is
[…] only practicable if the means discovered
increase the power of labour sufficiently to reproduce
the additional capital in the time it wastes away.
If this be not the case, the capitalist must lose his
wealth. But the increased efficiency of the labourers
must, besides this, produce some profit, or he would
have no motive for employing his capital in production at
all…, all the while, that by employing fresh
masses of auxiliary capital these two objects can be
effected, there is no definite and final limit to the
progressive employment of such fresh masses of
capital. They may go on increasing co-extensively with
the increase of knowledge. But knowledge is
never stationary; and, as it extends itself from hour to
hour in all directions, from hour to hour some new
implement, some new machine, some new motive force may
present itself, which will enable the community profitably
to add something to the mass of auxiliary capital by which
it assists its industry,
andso increase the difference between the
productiveness of its labour and that of poorer and less
skilful nations” (loc. cit., pp. 38-41).

||1149| First, with regard
to the statement that the inventions, or appliances or
contrivances must be of such a kind, “that the
productive powers of labour may be increased; and increased
to an extent which will make it,[mm] in addition to the wealth it
before produced, reproduce the additional auxiliary capital
used, as fast as it is destroyed…”, or
“reproduce the additional capital in the lime it
wastes away”. This means nothing more than
that the wear and tear is replaced as it takes place, or,
that on the average the additional capital is replaced in
the same period during which it is consumed. A portion
of the value of the product, or, what amounts to the same
thing, a portion of the product, must replace the consumed
auxiliary capital, and, at such a rate that if, in a given
period of time, it is wholly consumed, it is reproduced
wholly, or that a new capital of the same kind takes the
place of the capital used up. But what is the
condition for this? The productivity of labour must
rise to such an extent through the application of the
additional auxiliary capital that a part of the product can
be deducted to replace this component part either in kind or
by exchange.

The reproduction of the auxiliary capital takes place if
the productivity is so great, in other words, if the
increased amount of output produced during the working-day
of the same length is such that a unit of a particular
commodity is cheaper than a unit produced by the
former method, although the aggregate price of the total
output covers (for example) the annual depreciation of
the machinery, that is, the amount of depreciation
calculated per unit of the commodity is insignificant.
If the part which replaces the depreciation, and secondly
the part which replaces the value of raw material, are
deducted from the total product, then there remains a part
which pays for the wages and a part which covers the profit
and even yields more surplus-value although the price [per
unit] remains the same as it was previously.

An increase in the product could take place
without fulfilling this condition. If, for example,
the numbers of pounds of twist were to increase tenfold
(instead of a hundredfold, etc.) and if the value of the
wear and tear of the machinery which has to be
added to the price were to drop from one-sixth to
one-tenth, then the twist spun by machinery would be dearer
than that produced by spindle. If an additional
£100 of capital in the form of guano were used in
agriculture and if this guano had to be replaced in a year,
and if the value of a quarter (produced by the old method)
were £2, then 50 additional quarters would have to be
produced merely to replace the depreciation. And
without this the guano could not be used (profit is here
disregarded).

Jones’s remark that the additional capital must be
“reproduced” (of course from the sale of the
product or in kind), “in the time it wastes
away” simply means that the commodity must replace the
wear and tear embodied in it. In order to begin
production anew, all the value elements contained in the
commodity must be replaced by the time when its reproduction
is to begin again. In agriculture, this reproduction
time is given as a result of natural conditions, and the
period of time in which the wear and tear must be replaced
is given, in exactly the same way as the time in which all
the other value elements of grain, for example, have to be
replaced.

In order that the reproduction process can begin, i.e.,
that the renewal of the real process of production can take
place, the commodity must pass through the process of
circulation, that is, the commodity must be sold (insofar as
it is not replaced in kind, like the seeds) and the money
for which it is sold converted into elements of production
again. In the case of grain and other agricultural
products, there are certain specific periods for this
reproduction dictated by the seasons, that is, extreme
limits, definite limits are set to the duration of
the process of circulation.

Second: Such definite limits to the circulation process
arise in general from the nature of commodities as
use-values. All commodities deteriorate sooner or
later, although the extreme limit of their existence
varies. If they are not consumed by people (either in
the production process or individually), then they are
consumed by elemental natural forces. They decay, and
finally they disintegrate. If their use-value is
destroyed, then their exchange-value goes down the drain and
that puts an end to their reproduction. The final
limits of their circulation time are therefore determined by
the natural times and periods of reproduction proper to them
as use-values.

Third: In order that the production process of the
commodities may be continuous, ||1150| that is, so that one part of
capital may be continuously in the production process and
the other continuously
in the process of circulation, very varied
divisions of capital must take place, in accordance with the
natural limits of the periods of reproduction, or the limits
[of existence] of the different use-values, or the different
spheres of operation of capital.

Fourth: This applies to all the value elements of the
commodity simultaneously. But, in the case of
commodities in the production of which a great deal of fixed
capital is employed, there is, in addition to the limits
which their own use-values impose on the circulation
process, another determining factor, namely, the use-value
of fixed capital. It wastes away in a certain time
and, therefore, must be reproduced in a given period.
Let us assume, for example, that a ship lasts ten years, or
a spinning-machine twelve. The freight carried during
the ten years, or the twist sold during the twelve years,
must be sufficient for a new ship to replace the old one
after ten years and for a new spinning-machine to replace
the old one after twelve. If the fixed capital is used
up in six months, then the product must be returned from
circulation in this period.

Besides the natural mortality periods for commodities as
use-values—periods which vary greatly amongst
different use-values— and besides the requirements of
the continuity of the production process, which set even
more varied final limits to the circulation time, according
to whether the commodities must remain in the production
sphere or can remain in the circulation sphere for a longer
or shorter period of time, a third factor is thus added,
namely, the different mortality periods, and therefore
different requirements of reproduction, of the auxiliary
capital used in the production of commodities.

Jones declares that the second condition [for the use of
auxiliary capital] is the “profit” which the
auxiliary capital must produce, and this is the conditio
sine qua non for all capitalist production, regardless
of the particular form in which the capital is
employed. Nowhere does Jones explain how he conceives
the genesis of this profit. But since he merely
derives it from labour, and the profit yielded by the
auxiliary capital simply from the increased efficiency of
the labour of the workmen, it must consist of absolute or
relative surplus labour. It arises in general from the
fact that after deducting the part of the product
which either in kind or by exchange replaces the constituent
parts of capital which consist either of raw materials or of
means of production, the capitalist, firstly, pays wages
from the remainder of the product, and secondly, appropriates a part of it
as surplus product, which he either sells or consumes
in kind. (This latter is not a significant factor in
capitalist production and occurs only in a few exceptional
cases, when the capitalist directly produces necessary means
of subsistence.) This surplus product, however, just
as the other parts of the product, consists of the workers’
materialised labour, but labour which is not paid for; this
product of labour is appropriated by the capitalist without
any equivalent.

What is new in Jones’s presentation is that the increase
in the auxiliary capital over and above a certain level is
contingent on an increase of knowledge. Jones
declares that the necessary conditions are: 1) the means to
save the additional capital, 2) the will to save it, 3) some
inventions by means of which the productive power of labour
is increased sufficiently to produce the additional capital
and to produce a profit on it.

What is necessary above all is that there should be a
surplus product, either in kind or converted into
money.

In the production of cotton, for example, the planters in
America (like those in India at the present time) were able
to plant large areas, but did not have the means for
converting the raw cotton into cotton by means of cleaning
at the right time. Part of the cotton rotted in the
fields. This kind of thing was ended by the invention
of the cotton gin. Part of the product is now
converted into cotton gin. But the cotton gin does not
merely replace its own cost; it also increases the surplus
product. New markets have the same effect; for
instance, furthering the conversion of skins into money
(likewise improved transport).

Each new machine which consumes coal is a means for
converting surplus product existing in the shape of coal
into capital. The conversion of a part of the surplus
product into auxiliary capital can take place in two ways:
[firstly,] increase in the auxiliary capital already in
existence, that is, its reproduction on a larger scale;
[secondly,] discovery of new use-values or of a new use for
well-known use-values, and new inventions of machinery or of
motive power leading to the creation of new kinds of
auxiliary capital. In this context, extension of
knowledge is obviously one of the conditions for increasing
the auxiliary capital or, what amounts to the same thing,
for the conversion of surplus product or surplus money
(foreign trade is important in this connection) into
additional auxiliary capital. For example, the
telegraph opens up a whole new field for the investment of
auxiliary
capital, so do the railways, etc., and so does the
whole gutta-percha and India rubber production.

||1151| This point about the
extension of knowledge is important.

Consequently, accumulation does not have to set new
labour in motion, it may simply direct the labour previously
employed into new channels. For example, the same
machine workshop which previously made hand-looms now makes
power-looms, and some of the weavers are taken over by
[mills using] the changed methods of production while the
others are thrown on to the street.

When a machine replaces labour, it always demands less
new labour (for its own production) than it replaces.
Perhaps the old labour is simply given a new
direction. In any case, labour is freed, which after a
greater or lesser amount of trials and tribulations may be
used in other ways. The human material for a new
sphere of production is thus provided. As far as the
direct freeing of capital is concerned, it is not the
capital which buys the machine which becomes free, because
it is invested in it. And even assuming that the
machine is cheaper than the amount of wages it replaces,
more raw material, etc., will be required. If the
workers now dismissed previously cost £500 and the new
machine costs £500 too, then the capitalist previously
had an outlay of £500 every year, whereas the machine
may perhaps last ten years, so that in fact he now has an
outlay of only £50 a year. But what at any rate
becomes free (after deducting the [expenditure for] the
larger number of workers employed in the manufacture of the
machine and in auxiliary matters connected with it, such as
coal [production], etc.) is the capital which constituted
the income of the [dismissed] workers or that employed in
the production of commodities which these workers bought
with their wages. This continues to exist as it did
previously. If workers are simply replaced as motive
power without [the machinery] itself being substantially
altered, for example, if wind or water [now operate the
machinery] where this was done previously [by workers], two
lots of capital are freed, the capital previously spent on
paying the workers and the capital for which their money
income was exchanged. This is an example used by
Ricardo.

But one part of the product previously converted into
wages is now always reproduced as auxiliary capital.

A large part of the labour previously used directly in
the production of means of subsistence is now used in the
production of
auxiliary capital. This too is in contradiction to
Adam Smith’s view, according to which the accumulation of
capital is synonymous with the employment of more
productive labour. Apart from the examples considered
above, the result may be merely a change in the application
of labour and a withdrawal of labour from the direct
production of means of subsistence and its transfer to the
production of means of production, railways, bridges,
machinery, canals and so on.

***

<How important the existing amount of means of
production and the existing scale of production are for
accumulation [is described in the following]:

“The astonishing expedition with
which a great cotton factory, comprehending spinning
and weaving, can be erected in Lancashire, arises from the
vast collection of patterns of every variety
from those of gigantic steam engines, water wheels, iron
girders and joists, down to the smallest member of a
throstle or loom in possession of the engineers,
mill-wrights, and machine makers. In the course of
last year Mr. Fairbairn equipped water wheels equivalent to
700 horses power and steam engines to 400 horses power from
his engineer factory alone, independent of his mill-wright
and steam-boiler establishment. Hence, whenever
capital comes forward to take advantage of improved demand
for goods, the means of fructifying it are provided with
such rapidity, that it may realise its own amount in profit,
ere an analagous factory could be set a-going in France,
Belgium or Germany” (Andrew Ure, [Philosophy of
Manufactures, London, 1835, p. 39,] Philosophie des
Manufactures etc., tome I, Paris, 1836, pp. 61-62).[nn]

||1152| With development,
machinery becomes cheaper, partly relatively—in
comparison with its power—and partly absolutely; at
the same time, however, a massive concentration of machinery
takes place in the workshop, so that its value increases in
proportion to the living labour employed, although the value
of its individual components declines:

The driving force—the machine which produces the
motive power—becomes cheaper as the machinery which
transmits the power and the machine which the power
operates, are improved, as friction is reduced, etc.

“The facilities resulting from the
employment of self-acting tools have not only improved
the accuracy and accelerated the construction of the
machinery of a mill, but have also lowered its cost
and increased its mobility in a remarkable
degree. At present a throstle frame, made in the
past manner, may be had complete at the rate of 9s. 6d. per
spindle, and a self-actor at about 8s. per spindle including
the patent licence for the latter. The spindles in
cotton factories move with so little friction that 1
horse power drives 500 on the fine hand mule, 300 on the
self-actor mule, and 180 on the throstle; which power
includes all the subsidiary preparation machines as carding,
roving, etc., a power of three horses is adequate to drive
30 large looms with their dressing machines” (Andrew
Ure, [Philosophy of Manufactures, p.40,]
Philosophie des Manufactures etc., tome I, Paris,
1836, pp. 62-63).>

***

[Jones says further:]

“Over by far the greater part of the
globe, the great majority of the labouring classes do not
even receive their wages from capitalists; they either
produce them themselves, or receive them from the revenue of
their customers. The great primary step has not been
taken which secures the continuity of their labour;
they are aided by such knowledge
only, and such an amount of mechanical
power as may be found in the possession of persons
labouring with their own hands for their
subsistence. The skill and science of more
advanced countries, the giant motive forces, the accumulated
tools and machines which those forces may set in motion, are
absent from the tasks of the industry which is carried on by
such agents alone” ([Richard Jones, Text-book of
Lectures on the Political Economy of Nations,] p.
43).

<In England herself:

“Take agriculture… A
knowledge of good farming is spread thinly, and with wide
intervals, over the country. A very small part of the
agricultural population is aided by all the capital which
… might be available in this branch of the national
industry… the working in these” (great
manufactories) “is the occupation of only a small
portion of our non-agricultural labourers. In country
workshops, in the case of all handicraftsmen and mechanics
who carry on their separate task with little combination,
there the division of labour is incomplete, and its
continuity consequently imperfect… Abandon the
great towns, observe the broad surface of the country, and
you will see what a large portion of the national industry
is lagging at a long distance from perfection, in either
continuity, skill, or power” (loc. cit., p. 44).

Capitalist production leads to separation of science
from labour and at the same time to the use of science
in material production.

***

With regard to rent, Jones remarks correctly:

Rent, in the modern sense of the term, which depends
entirely on profit, presupposes:

“… the power of moving
capital and labour from one occupation to others[oo]
… the ‘mobility’ of capital and
labour, and in countries where agricultural capital and
labour have no such mobility … we cannot expect to
observe any of the results which we see to arise here from
that mobility exclusively” (loc. cit., p.59.)

This “mobility of capital and labour” is, in
general, the real prerequisite for establishing the
average rate of profit. It presupposes indifference to
the specific form of labour. In reality
friction takes place (at the expense of the working class)
between the one-sided character which the division of labour
and machinery impose on labour-power on the one hand,
while on the other hand, it confronts capital <which is
thereby differentiated from its undeveloped form in
craft-build industry> merely as the living potentiality
of any type of labour in general, which is given this or
that direction according to the profit that can be made in
this or that sphere of production, so that different masses
of labour are transferable from one sphere to another.

In Asia, etc., “the body of the population consists
[…] of labouring […] peasants; systems of
cultivation imperfectly developed, ||1153|afford long intervals of
leisure. As the peasant produces his own food
[…] he also produces most of the other primary
necessities which he consumes—his dress, his
implements, his furniture, even his buildings: for there
is in his class little division of occupations. The
fashions and habits of such a people do not change;
they are handed down from parents to children; there is
nothing to alter or disturb them” (p. 97).

On the other hand, the capitalist mode of production,
whose characteristic features are mobility of capital and
labour and continual revolutions in the methods of
production, and therefore in the relations of production and
commerce and the way of life, leads to great mobility in the
habits, modes of thinking, etc., of the people.

Compare the following with the above-quoted passage about
“the intervals of leisure” and the
“imperfectly developed systems of
cultivation”.

1. Where a steam engine is employed on a farm; it forms
part of a system which employs most labourers
in agriculture, and is in all cases [associated] with a
reduction [in the number] of horses[pp] (“On the Forces used in
Agriculture”. A Paper read by Mr. John C. Morton
at the Society of Arts on December 7, 1859).

2. “… the difference of time required
to complete the products of agriculture, and of other
species of labour,” is “the main cause of the
great dependence of the agriculturists. They cannot
bring their commodities to market
in less time than a year. For that whole period
they are obliged to borrow of the shoemaker, the tailor, the
smith, the wheelwright, and the various other labourers,
whose products they cannot dispense with, but which[qq] are completed in a
few days or weeks. Owing to this natural circumstance,
and owing to the more rapid increase of the wealth produced
by other labour than that of agriculture, the monopolizers
of all the land, though they have also monopolized
legislation, have not been able to save[rr] themselves and their servants, the
farmers, from becoming the most dependent class of men in
the community” (Thomas Hodgskin, Popular Political
Economy, London, 1827, p. 147, note).

The capitalist differs from capital in that he must live,
and therefore must consume part of the surplus-value as
revenue, daily and hourly. Thus, the longer the period
of production before the capitalist can bring his commodity
to market, or the longer the period of time before he
receives the proceeds from the sale of his commodities, the
longer he must live either on credit during the intervening
time—a matter we are not discussing here—or the
larger must be the stock of money in his possession which he
can expend as revenue. He must advance his own
revenue for a longer period. His capital must be
larger. He is obliged to leave a part of it always
unused, as a consumption fund.

[c) Jones on Accumulation and Rate of Profit.
On the Source of Surplus-value]

We now come to Jones’s teaching on
accumulation. His original contribution so far
has been that it is by no means necessary for accumulation
to arise from profit; and secondly, that the accumulation
of auxiliary capital depends upon the advance of
knowledge. He limits the latter to the discovery
of new mechanical appliances, motive forces, etc. But
it is true in general. For example, if corn is used as
raw material in the preparation of spirits, then a new
source of accumulation is opened up, because the surplus
product may be converted into new forms, satisfy new wants
and enter as a productive element into a new sphere of
production. The same applies if starch, etc., is
prepared from corn. The sphere of exchange of these
particular commodities and of all commodities is thereby
expanded. The same takes place when coal is used for
lighting, etc.

Foreign trade, too, is of course an important factor in
the process of accumulation, because it tends to increase
the variety of use-values and the volume of commodities.

What Jones says first of all is concerned with the,
connection between accumulation and the rate of
profit. (He is by no means very clear about the
origin of the latter.)

“The power of a nation to accumulate
capital from profits does not vary with the rate of
profit… on the contrary, the power to accumulate
capital from profits, ordinarily varies inversely as the
rate of profit, that is, it is great where the rate of
profit is low, and small where the rate of profit is
high” ([Jones, Text-book of Lectures,]
p. 21).

Adam Smith says: ||1154|
“Though that part of the revenue of the inhabitants
which is derived from the profits of stock is always much
greater in rich, than in poor, countries, it is because
the stock is much greater; in proportion to the
stock, the profits are generally much less” (Adam
Smith, Wealth of Nations, Vol. II, Chapter 3 [quoted
by Richard Jones in the Text-book of Lectures, p. 21,
note]).

“In England and Holland, the rate
of profit is lower than in any other part of
Europe” ([Jones, loc. cit.,] p. 21).

“… during the period in which
her” (England’s) “wealth and capital have
been increasing the most rapidly, the rate of profits
has been gradually declining…” (pp. 21-22).

“… the relative masses of
the profits produced … depend not alone on the
rate of profit … but on the rate of profit
taken in combination with the relative quantities of capital
employed” (p. 22).

“The increasing quantity of capital
of the richer nation … is also usually accompanied by
a decrease in the rate of profits, or a decrease in the
proportion, which the annual revenue derived from the
capital employed, bears to its gross amount”
(loc. cit.).

“If it be said that all other
things being equal, the rate of profit will determine the
power of accumulating from profit, the answer is, that
the case, if practically possible, is too rare to deserve
consideration. We know, from observation, that a
declining rate of profit is the usual accompaniment of
increasing differences in the mass of capital
employed by different nations, and that, therefore, while
the rate of profits in the richer nations declines, all
other things are not equal.

“If it be asserted that the decline
of profits may be great enough to make it impossible to
accumulate from profits at all, the answer […] is
that it would be foolish to argue on the assumption of such
a decline, because long before the rate of profits had
reached such a point, capital would go abroad to realize
greater profits elsewhere, and that the power of exporting
will always establish some limit below which profits will
never fall in any one country, while there are others in
which the rate of profit is greater”
(pp. 22-23).

Apart from the primary sources of accumulation,
there are derivative ones, such as, for example, the
owners of the national debt, officials, etc.[ss]

All this is fine and good.
It is quite correct that the amounts accumulated by
no means depend solely on the rate of profit, but on the
rate of profit multiplied by the capital employed, that is,
just as much on the size of the capital advanced. If
we call the capital employed C, and the rate of
profit r, then accumulation will be Cr, and it
is clear that this product can increase if C grows
more quickly than r declines. And this is
indeed a fact derived from observation. But this does
not explain the cause, the raison d’être
of this fact. Jones himself came very near to it when
he made the observation that the auxiliary capital
continuously increases relatively to the working population
by which it is put into motion.

Insofar as the decline in [the rate of] profit is due to
the cause mentioned by Ricardo—the rise of
rent—the ratio of the total surplus-value to the
capital employed remains unchanged. But one part of
it—rent—increases, at the expense of the other
part i.e., of profit; this leaves the proportion of the
total surplus-value, of which profit, interest and rent are
only categories, [to the total capital] unchanged.
Thus, in fact, Ricardo denies the phenomenon itself.

On the other hand, the mere decline in the rate of
interest proves nothing in itself, just as its rise proves
nothing, although it does indeed always indicate the minimum
rate below which profit cannot fall. For profit
must always be higher than the average rate of interest.

||1155| Apart from the
terror which the law of the declining rate of profit
inspires in the economists, its most important corollary is
the presupposition of a constantly increasing concentration
of capitals, that is, a constantly increasing
decapitalisation of the smaller capitalists. This, on
the whole, is the result of all laws of capitalist
production. And if we strip this fact of the
contradictory character which, on the basis of capitalist
production, is typical of it, what does this fact, this
trend towards centralisation, indicate? Only that
production loses its private character and becomes a social
process, not formally—in the sense that all production
subject to exchange is social because of the absolute
dependence of the producers on one another and the necessity
for presenting their labour as abstract social labour ( [by
means of] money)—but in actual fact. For the
means of production are employed as communal, social means
of production and therefore not [determined] by [the fact
that they are] the property of an individual, but by their
relation to production, and the labour likewise is performed
on a social scale.

A separate section in Jones’s work is headed “On
the causes which determine the inclination to
accumulate”. [He mentions the
following]:

“… 1st.—Differences of
temperament and disposition in the people.

“2ndly.—Differences in the
proportions in which the national revenues are divided among
the different classes of the population.

“3rdly.—Different degrees of
security for the safe enjoyment of the capital saved.

“4thly.—Different degrees of
facility in investing profitably, as well as safely,
successive savings.

“5thly.—Differences in the
opportunities offered to the different ranks of the
population to better their position by means of
savings” (p. 24).

All these five causes, in fact, boil down to
this—that accumulation depends on the stage of the
capitalist mode of production reached by a particular
nation.

To begin with No. 2. Where capitalist
production exists in a developed form, profit constitutes
the chief source of accumulation, that is, the capitalists
have concentrated the greater part of the national revenue
in their hands and even a section of the landowners seeks to
capitalise [their revenue].

No. 3. Security (in the legal and police
sense) increases in proportion to the degree to which the
capitalists secure control of the State administration.

No. 4. As capital develops, the spheres of
production increase on the one hand, and, on the other hand,
the organisation of credit [develops] in order to collect
every farthing in the hands of the money-lenders
(hankers).

No. 5. In capitalist production, the
improvement of one’s position depends solely on money, and
everyone can delude himself into believing that he can
become a Rothschild.

There remains No. 1. All people do not have
the same predisposition towards capitalist production.
Some primitive peoples, such as the Turks, have neither the
temperament nor the inclination for it. But these are
exceptions. The development of capitalist production
creates an average level of bourgeois society and therefore
an average level of temperament and disposition amongst the
most varied peoples. It is as truly cosmopolitan as
Christianity. This is why Christianity is likewise the
special religion of capital. In both it is only men
who count. One man in the abstract is worth just as
much or as little as the next man. In the one case,
all depends on whether or not he has faith, in the other, on
whether or not he has credit. In addition, however, in
the one case, predestination has to
be added, and in the other case, the accident of whether or
not a man is born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

***

The source of surplus-value and primitive
rent:

“When land has been appropriated and
cultivated, such land yields, in almost every case, to the
labour employed on it, more than is necessary to
continue the kind of cultivation already bestowed upon
it. Whatever it produces beyond this, ||1156| we will call its surplus
produce. Now this surplus produce is the source
of primitive rents, and limits the extent of such
revenues, as can be continuously derived from the land by
its owners, as distinct from its
occupiers” (p. 19).

These primitive rents are the first social form in
which surplus-value is represented, and this is the obscure
conception which forms the foundation of the theory of the
Physiocrats.

Both absolute and relative surplus-value have this in
common that they presuppose a certain level of the
productive power of labour. If the entire working-day
(available labour-time) of a man (any man) were only
sufficient to feed himself (and at best his family as well),
then there would be no surplus labour, surplus-value and
surplus produce. This prerequisite of a certain level
of productivity is based on the natural productiveness of
land and water, the natural sources of wealth. It is
different in different countries, etc. Needs are
simple and crude in early times and the minimum produce
required for the maintenance of the producers themselves is
consequently small, and so is the surplus product. On
the other hand, the number of people who live off the
surplus product in those circumstances is likewise very
small, so that they receive the sum total of the small
amounts of surplus product obtained from a relatively large
number of producers.

The basis for absolute surplus-value—that is, the
real precondition for its existence—is the natural
fertility of the land, of nature, whereas relative
surplus-value depends on the development of the social
productive forces.

And with this we finish with Jones. |XVIII-1156||

[a] Marx is not
quoting here but paraphrasing.—mainly in
German—a paragraph from p.61 of Jones’s
book.—Ed.